


Problems from the Ice

by mysticaljayne



Series: Assassin Trio [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Brainwashing, Hydra (Marvel), Memory Loss, Multi, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-04
Updated: 2018-05-20
Packaged: 2018-07-29 05:46:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 25
Words: 46,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7672435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mysticaljayne/pseuds/mysticaljayne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Each of the trio is sent on what appears to be routine missions. Natasha is sent to babysit a billionaire philanthropist. Clint has the joy of watching a hammer. And James? Well, he gets sent to guard a few scientists as they thaw out an icon.</p><p>But as is their luck, routine doesn't mean routine with any of these three.</p><p>Will their relationship be able to stand the incoming chaos?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Clint grumbled as he felt a hand start to shake him. “No. I’m sleepin’.” He snuggled deeper into the covers and hid his face under the pillow. There was too much light and too much movement.

 

“Clint.” A male voice, along with that hand back on his shoulder was calling for him to wake up. “Agent Coulson will have your head if you're late.”

 

Clint mumbled something just as the blanket was pulled from him. “Why not yours?” Clint threw the pillow with deadly accuracy at the other man’s head. Which just seemed to humor him.

 

Laughter punctuated the following words, or at least as much laughter that James ever gave either of his two lovers. “Because he needs my brains, not yours.”

 

“Hardy har har.” Clint grumbled before actually throwing his legs off the bed to start getting dressed for the mission they were sending him on. It was something in New Mexico, not that he’d actually read the whole file. Just the basics. “I still say he loves me more.”

 

Hands grabbed Clint’s face and pulled them towards another face. A harsh kiss, more of one of claiming than anything else, was planted on Clint’s lips. “My Hawk. мой ястреб.”

 

“James…we’ve been over this.” Clint whined, even as the soldier kept a tight grip on him. He knew that James was having trouble with Natasha off to babysit the billionaire. Still, he was used to being the calming influence in their trio. “I'm yours, just as you are my soldier. Moi solda.”

 

“Moy soldat.” James offhandedly corrected the other man, still holding tight. “мой солдат.” Clint didn’t fight the hold, because he knew James needed the reassurance. He pulled his head forward to give James a kiss of his own, one that wasn’t as harsh or demanding.

 

He finally pulled back, a bit out of breath, but he wasn’t the only one this time. “Fine, moy soldat.” His accent was probably still as atrocious as Nat and James had told him when they first started work on his Russian. “I still have to go.”

 

James let go, but his look was still as dark as it was earlier. “I don’t like it.” He never liked it when both of his people were sent out on missions while he had to wait at home.

 

Clint understood the feeling. While SHIELD used both him and Nat more often than James, he had been left behind a few times. The three of them were the heavy hitters, with Agent Coulson pointing them in the right direction. No one else could handle them, and they refused to take separate handlers. Clint was prone to playing pranks, and roping his two lovers into joining him in a prank war. So far, only Coulson has been able to handle the kind of trouble the three of them could get into.

 

Is a mission routine, but they need some eyes in the sky? Send Hawkeye, it won’t be routine for long. He’ll find a hidden viper nest in a field full of sheep.

 

Does a mission appear to be a simple in and out? Send in Black Widow. Soon enough, there will be some kind of explosions and mess to clean up. Probably a bloody one.

 

Is the mission a simple observation? Send Winter Soldier. By the end, there will be something involving the Red Room before the end and some kind of conspiracy.

 

The three of them, alone, just had a knack for finding trouble. The other handlers usually despaired at the thought with working with just one. When needing two? They ran as far away as possible. Three? The end times are there.

 

Coulson saw the way they did things in a different light. They were solving a problem that nobody else happened to see, but had always been there.

 

Even if the paperwork made them all threaten murder more times than not.

 

“You’re the one that woke me.” Clint pouted, back to the present and the too handsome face that stared into his own. “Don’t worry, Phil will send you out on a mission soon enough.”

 

That didn’t placate James, but he still let his lover go to finish getting ready. The mission was a simple one, the same as Nat’s. He has no reason to worry about them.


	2. Chapter 2

Clint was right, though James was never going to admit it to the other man. Clint’s head was already big enough for all three of them. Clint also had the heart to match with his head, but his self-confidence was about a third of what he showed the world. He was the heart of the three, whether the idiot knew it or not.

 

And he was right about Coulson giving him a mission.

 

Apparently a few scientists found the plane that Captain America went down in during the 40s. They found his body in the ice and there was talk of thawing the icon out to see if they can get access to the serum in the blood. Though James heard talk of seeing if the Captain was still alive. Which shouldn’t be possible, but James had been kept on ice for much of the time before they tied him to the Red Room and by extension to Nat.

 

It’s not an impossible idea that that ice didn’t kill the Captain, since a similar serum flowed through his veins, Natasha’s, and now Clint’s. Each of them had a knockoff version based on James’s, but it did increase certain functions for them. Maybe not to Captain’s level, but enough to give them an edge in their work.

 

Even if they didn’t really need it. Just their skills alone made them near the top in the field of assassins and mercenaries.

 

So there he is, standing guard as a few grunts pulled the frozen remains of an American icon out of a plane that had been lost to time. They needed someone to guard over the group, and why not one of the best snipers that SHIELD had to offer? Even if James felt that there was more to the story than just that. SHIELD never had just one reason to do things, there was also a dozen or so more hidden in the shadows.

 

Being a part of the shadows is what James is used to, the same as for Clint. The two of them are assassins of the best caliber, but sometimes even the best is forced to do something that the average could do. Such as him walking around, and merely standing guard.

 

The pull the frozen icon out and put him/it into a freezer that brought back quite a few memories that James quickly pushed to the side. The scientists were talking about protective measures, temperature gauges, and a bunch of other things that he could barely understand. All he got from all of their ramblings was that they had to keep the iceman frozen, and then to gauge what to do with him later on at a different facility.

 

A different facility meant that he most likely wouldn’t be home when Clint or Nat returned from either of their two trips. He had been looking forward to Natalia telling him all about the billionaire and her off the record opinion of the man. Even Clint’s ramblings was something that he was looking forward to. The cold brought back the memories of things that he never wants to do again, and wipings that he never wanted to go through again.

 

With Clint and Nat, he knew they would do everything in their power to stop it from happening. The three of them, together, could solve whatever problems the world happened to throw their way.

 

His eyes landed on the man wearing a suit that resembled the USA flag, and a memory tried to surface. A memory that had been wiped many times but came back from time to time. Not really a memory, but the impression of one.

 

He shook his head, and finished his patrol of the area. It doesn’t matter what the memory was, because the memory was gone. Like so many others from his past.

 

What he knows is that he trained Nat in the Red Room. Eventually, they gave the young girl to him as a gift. A gift for obeying and not rebelling as he was so prone to do whenever they kept him thawed for too long. His goal in life had been keeping an eye on the young redhead as she grew from childhood and into adulthood. He saw her when she took her first kill, and all the way to when they both agreed to take Hawkeye for their own.

 

For all three of them were parts to a whole. A whole that had been fractured time and time again. Hope is what Clint brought James and Nat. Hope for a better tomorrow.

 

While the frozen man looked familiar, James felt nothing for him. Whoever he had been was lost in mind. Maybe James had a target that was related to him? He couldn’t remember. He didn’t want to remember.

 

Not now. Maybe not ever.

 

He still glances back, though. Just to see if the flash of memory will actually come into focus for him. Just a faint feeling, but that was it.

 

He slung his rifle over his shoulder and helped the scientists push the frozen icon into a refrigerator truck. One good thing about this trip was that he got to ride in the other, warm, vehicle instead.

 

“Load up!” He orders the agents assigned to help him in guarding the cargo, “Eyes all around. No need to be surprised.”

 

“Yes, Agent Barnes.” One of them saluted before going on to business. James still doesn’t know how SHIELD picked the last name they did for him.

 

Who named a kid James Barnes?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It took a while, and for that I apologize. Life has a habit of getting in the way of writing.
> 
> I have the basic idea for the next chapter, and should have another one up by next Sunday.
> 
> Enjoy, folks. I do love feedback. ;)


	3. Chapter 3

It didn’t take long to move the mission location to somewhere quite a bit warmer than the arctic circle. SHIELD apparently had a site in New York that they were going to use to unthaw the icon before deciding what to do with it. The decision making process was way above his paygrade. At least, that’s what he told Clint that night when the three of them video called each other. Three-way is a blast in more ways than one.

 

“Come on, man.” Clint is somehow hanging upside down, already bored after the first day of watching over the hammer. “What is the icon? What are they going to do with it?” James says somehow, because it looks like Clint is hanging from the ceiling. Or the idiot could just be turning the camera upside down like he did one time for kicks.

 

Natasha is rolling her eyes, once more at the antics of the archer. He may look to be the eldest of them, but he’s always acting like the youngest. “Idiot.” She’s doing something to her nails, most likely painting them for her work the next day. “Tell us about your hammer.” James is certain she sees the desperation because she changed the topic. Usually, she enjoyed letting something uncomfortable fold out.

 

Clint flips, so he must have actually been hanging on to something. “Boring. Blonde dude got to it with some pretty awesome fighting skills. But was taken away when he couldn’t pull the hammer out of the ground.” He’s fiddling with one of his arrow prototypes, and James doesn’t even want to know what that one will be able to do. Clint loves to create new things for his arrows to do.

 

Like James and Nat, even Phil, are prone to saying…Clint can be a child.

 

“Like Excalibur?” Nat spoke up, and both of the men are surprised that she knew something like that. “Sword in the stone?” She looks annoyed at that two of them, but they’ve also been without each other for a while. “What is your problem?”

 

Clint chooses that moment to laugh. “Just surprised you know the story. He was no King Arthur, though. The hammer didn’t budge. Didn’t for any of the other agents that tried, either.” He chuckles as though laughing at the agents.

 

James knew better than that. “Did you try?” He knows he would have, just because. Nat must know so, too, because she’s looking at the screen with intent.

 

Clint’s smile is sheepish. “Of course. Couldn’t pass up the opportunity to prove I’m the fairest in the land!” A loud noise comes from behind him along with Phil’s voice yelling for Hawkeye to get his feathery butt down from the roof. “Oops. Gotta go guys. Don’t have sex without me!!” Before his screen went blank.

 

“Was that an order or a suggestion?” Natalia’s voice purred over the screen, and James’s eyes lock to hers. “If a suggestion…” Her eyebrows rose suggestively, but he could clearly see the humor in her eyes. She was playing with him, just like she would a fly caught in her trap. As suddenly as the playfulness came, it was gone. “Why don’t you wish to speak of your mission?”

 

There were any number of reasons as to why he shouldn’t speak about it. Any number of excuses he could speak of to throw her off of this line of questioning. Or at least to try to throw her off of it. Their relationship, though, is built on a type of honesty and trust.

 

“солдат.” Nat must have been getting tired of his silence, because she calls to him through the screen. “James. What are you keeping from us?” Because what one of them knows, the other two soon will. Or at least they’ll trust the others to not push it when not really needed.

 

James guesses that it must be his expression that makes Nat call for the details or at least for an idea. “I think I know the icon.”

 

So many ways to take that statement, but Natalia has always been able to go to the root. “Know or _know_.” The emphasis meant so many things, but it was something that they knew of the two of them.

 

“Impossible to _know_. It was frozen seventy years ago.” He knows his handlers traded out nearly every time he was unfrozen, even he knows it is impossible for someone to live that long. “Just looks familiar, but without a memory.”

 

Nat just nods, because both of them have had to deal with that over the years. Sometimes they would cross paths with someone the recognized them, but they couldn’t ever place. For a while, Nat hadn’t even remembered James when they wiped a bit too much from her memory. “Why didn’t you wish for ястреб to know?”

 

That was a good question, and one that James didn’t wish to delve into even if he knew he must. “My ledger. He likes to pretend that the past did not occur.”

 

Even though her expression looks to be nearly impassive, he can still see the faint traces of humor. “You know his isn’t clean, and we did capture him. He was willing to kill us to escape.” That was a part of their hawk, and part of the reason why they loved him even more the longer they had him. He was stubborn, and his stubbornness had led them this far. Without choosing him, they wouldn’t have went down this path.

 

“I remember.” That memory was crystal clear in James’s mind. Their hawk tried to do everything to escape back to Coulson. After getting to know the man, James could see the draw. Agent Coulson was a father-figure to their hawk, and someone that both James and Nat could respect. The only way they would obey a handler as much as they did Coulson was through respect. Or at least that was the only reason why Hawkeye would obey one.

 

While James and Nat had been forged to obey, the more Clint was forced the more he rebelled. That part of his spirit made him different than the two Russians, and had their own rebellious streaks come to light just being in his company for a short time.

 

“Good, then stop being foolish.” Nat ordered of him, and he just nodded in acknowledgement. “There is no reason for you to keep secrets from us. All of our ledgers are dripping in blood.”

 

 _Not as much._ But James couldn’t give voice to his thought that he had been killing before either of them had been born, even if it was an impossibility. “How about your mission?”

 

Which was all the opening Nat needed to start on a small rant about idiots and suicidal tendencies. While he knew she was talking about Stark, something told him a part of her rant had to do with him and Clint.

 

Sometimes their hawk thought he could really fly, and sometimes James used himself as a human shield more often than he should.

 

Nat was one to complain, because she seemed to believe herself a ghost by the way she would enter a place without an exit plan or back up.


	4. Chapter 4

** Hawkeye: **

Clint kept up on his perch, not even bothering with covering up from the rain. He knows that Bucky and Nat have a bond that is different than the bond they have with him, but sometimes he feels like the third wheel on a two wheeled bike. Basically, he feels unneeded in this trio that he has found himself in.

 

He doesn’t regret bringing them back to SHIELD with him, and if, when, they find that they no longer want him? He’ll live with it. He’s lived with a broken heart before, even if this time feels as if the hurt will be a million times more than he felt with Bobbi. He had never been as entwined with anybody as he is with those two.

 

Even when they wise up and move on from him, he’ll still wish them the best.

 

Rain goes down his back, but he doesn’t move from his place in the sky. Hopefully the rain will stop by the time Phil gets to Dr. Foster’s place. For some reason Agent Coulson believes she has information about where the hammer came from. Usually, Phil is right.

 

Still…Clint likes being able to hide in the shadows of the night. He is the best shot that SHIELD has, closely followed by Bucky.

 

Bucky and Nat will be good partners. Clint is able to cover both of their backs, but he’s really not needed. Both of them have more than proven their place and loyalty to SHIELD, and their equally impressive abilities.

 

He’s completely still in his chosen nest, waiting for whatever prey would come into his line of sight. Hawkeye is the best at what he does, and he never misses what he aims for.

 

Too bad his far-sight makes it so he has trouble seeing what is right in front of his face.

 

He’s so worried about being needed, that he never thinks about being wanted.

 

For who could ever want an old carnie?

 

 

 

** Black Widow: **

After turning off the camera, Nat lets out a breath she hadn’t even known she’d been holding. With a grimace, she pulls off the ridiculous shoes that she’s been wearing for her cover as Ms. Pott’s personal assistant Natalie Rushman. A blister is starting to form on the back of her heel, and she glares at it as though willing it to heal by mental power alone.

 

The serum flowing through her veins will have it healed up by morning, but that wasn’t what was getting to her.

 

She saw the hurt in Clint’s eyes through the screen, and really knew he felt like bolting when he actually obeyed Coulson’s order. Usually he ignored anything that involved someone calling him feathery.

 

And she couldn’t help him from hundreds of miles away.

 

James’s confusion was completely obvious, and so was his reluctance to bring up the past in front of yastreb. Something about his mission was getting to him, and he didn’t want to face it with them.

 

Nat is patient. She can wait out James’s silence, and she knows Clint can be just as patient as she is. They can wait out James’s silence.

 

Feeling optimistic, she turns out the light and fixes the gun better under her pillow. Tomorrow will be a new day, and hopefully a step towards being finished with her mission.

 

The sooner she is finished, the sooner she can get back to her soldier and hawk. Babysitting the walking tinman with suicidal tendencies is wearing her down. Especially since his personal body guard keeps hitting on her. It’s kind of sweet how Happy is trying to prove himself to her.

 

 

 

** Winter Soldier: **

James closes the camera just in time for someone to motion him towards them. “Agent Barnes, the asset is being thawed as we speak. He should be completely so by morning.” James nods at the Level 3 agent to go back to watching the scientists.

 

A quick click of his comm and he was hooked in with his handler. “Winter Soldier reporting, sir.” He would need sleep eventually, but he can go quite a bit more time before needing to rejuvenate. “The icon is being thawed. Should be finished by morning.”

 

“Get some rest, Winter Soldier.” Agent Coulson ordered over the line, his voice as bland as always. “I’ll be there by then.” All three of them know the little hero worship Phil has for this icon, and they all hope the best for their handler. They care for the agent, and really do not wish to see him disappointed.

 

A soft click is all James needs to hear to know that Agent Coulson has signed off. He clicks his comm off and lays back on the wood floor. He can get a few hours rest this way, and still be alert enough to protect the icon and the scientists working on it.

 

His sleep isn’t dreamless but filled with memories of a skinny kid who kept getting black eyes by fighting with other kids at least twice his size. A memory of this same kid trying everything to get accepted into the military, and failing every time. The memory of applying to join because of this same kid.

 

It was memories, yes, but not ones that he knew. These memories were from before all of the wiping. Memories that shouldn’t still be haunting his dreams.

 

But they were.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A different style than the earlier chapters.
> 
> Enjoy. I love hearing opinions. There should be another chapter up by Sept. 2nd.  
> Once again, enjoy.


	5. Chapter 5

James is standing at attention when Agent Coulson lands in the morning. The suited agent is one of the higher ranking officials that SHIELD has, but still the man was charged with looking out for Hawkeye, BlackWidow, and WinterSoldier. Mostly, that had to do with how Hawkeye brought them and no one wanted to have their hands dirtied with a potential sleeper. Coulson trusted his agents, but that didn’t mean the rest of SHIELD did.

 

“Agent.” Coulson nods to him to move out of the way, and James does so. Inside of the slowly warming room the icon is laid down in the center of the room on a table. A few of the SHIELD doctors brought in put IV’s in his arm with some anesthetic going through it. The icon was breathing, so they knew its time in the ice hadn’t killed it.

 

Seventy years frozen…who would have guessed that the serum would be able to do that?

 

James, if anyone had bothered to ask him. HYDRA kept him frozen more often than not. He knows that for a fact. He may not know who he was from before the wiping and Red Room, but he remembers the memories he was allowed to keep. He knows he has been frozen for many years, based on the type of knowledge they had to implant each time they woke him up.

 

The knowledge ranged from weaponry, clothing, security systems, and all the way to basic politics and languages.

 

Each time was something different that needed to be added to his knowledge, and that only could occur if some type passed between the last time he was awaken. Their best guess was that he was experimented on, and frozen the first time, at some point before the sixties.

 

He had memories that could be traced to the early sixties. Before that? The memories were foggy at best. James had pieces from the fifties, which included him starting to train Natalia, but the forties? He had nothing. HYDRA had taken great measure to be sure he would remember nothing of that time.

 

Agent Coulson looked over the wires and machines hooked up to the man/icon known as Captain America with a frown. “Is he stable?” The senior agent asked of the doctor that had been hovering in the background.

 

Not literally hovering, but the doctor had refused to leave and as such had been volunteered to answer all of the questions Agent Coulson could possibly have.

 

Since James knows how much of a fan Coulson is of Captain America (thanks to Clint being a loudmouth at times), he knows that there could potentially be quite a few. Potentially.

 

“Yes, sir.” The doctor answers, just shy of giving a salute in his voice. “He is ready to be woken whenever, sir.” James never thought he would be tempted to roll his eyes like Clint is prone to do when meeting a newbie, until now.

 

Coulson just nods, and walks around the place. “We need to have him believe it is 1944.” He suddenly pauses and looks at James in thought. “Does this place look like 1944, Agent?”

 

James is confused at why Coulson is asking him, but he goes ahead and shakes his head. “No, sir.” Too modern, for one thing. There were way too many shiny things in this room, and too many women wearing pants. While not unheard of, most women were wearing skirts and dresses.

 

Coulson is the best for a reason, because he’s already motioning for them to ready the icon for travel. “Exactly, Agent Barnes. Agent Mackenzie? Give him something that will wear off in approximately twelve hours.” He’s already moving, the man who looked like a simple business man in his suit, but James knew could drop most of the people in the room.

 

Appearances can be deceiving, and in the line of being a spy? Being underestimated was something that many aspired to have.

 

Nat did that by being the arm candy. Who believes that the beautiful face on someone’s arm is capable of so much damage?

 

Clint did his by making himself out to be a buffoon. Who would believe the klutz could balance on a thin rope and take out someone through roaring wind and rain? With an arrow?

 

James, though, used his silence as his cover. He played the perfect soldier, or perfectly silent body guard. Who expected the man who appeared to be drugged to be paying perfect attention?

 

They move out not long afterwards, and James actually wished for some time to contact his lovers before they took on this move. He knew that things had to move forward, but he wished to see Nat’s face and listen to Clint’s horrible jokes.

 

Instead, he watches as the man known as Captain America is put into the back of an ambulance and he takes up position beside the icon. Looking down, James takes note that the icon still looks familiar. The memories from before are just under the surface.

 

Still, he doesn’t dig into them. He can’t afford to. The memories may be real, or maybe that are false. His ledger is already red enough without adding a possibility to it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's another one... I have two more stories I would like to have updated this week. For once, I even have an idea for the next chapter!
> 
> I still love feedback, folks. I update as I'm done. So...if you see any mistakes? Tell me, so they can be fixed.


	6. Chapter 6

Coulson drove the van in which the icon was strapped into. The agent wasn’t about to let Captain America out of his sight. James knew Clint would be cracking jokes at their handler’s expense if he was there. But the archer wasn’t. James was alone in watching the van go in and out of traffic to get to the safe house that Coulson had set up.

 

They finally stopped at what looked like a studio for some type of movie set. James looked around the place, looking for any spots that a sniper could set up a nest. There were a few possibilities, but most of those were ones that only the most insane (or Clint) would set up at. The place wasn’t set up for protection, but should work for what Coulson wanted.

 

Speaking of the suited agent, Coulson stepped up next to him. “What do you think, Agent Barnes?” While at work, he was the most formal of them all.

 

James merely shrugged. “Doesn’t look like the 40’s.” Merely an observation based off of what Coulson asked earlier. James doesn’t notice the look that Coulson throws his way. The place doesn’t really look like any time that he remembers, except maybe that one time a mark was hold up as a director for some movie. Natalia took care of that one.

 

“The inside is what needs to fool him.” Coulson informs his agent with a nod towards the building. A few agents are rolling the icon out of the van and farther into the room. In there, Captain America will be changed into civilian clothes that match the 40’s and the radio will be set to playing. Within the hour, he will wake up without knowing what century it is. “I need you to watch from above, out of sight.”

 

James merely nods. He’s an agent, but a sniper foremost. “Sir, may I ask why he needs to believe it is the 1940’s?” It seems to be a strange thing to put so much effort into making an asset believe that he was in a different time frame. James feeling comfortable to question was just a sign of how different this company was, and how far he has changed from being Hydra’s Asset.

 

Coulson glances out of the corner of his eye at the man that many assassins whispered about like children did of the boogey man. He was the handler for three of the most elite assassins on Earth, and yet he still knows them as children. “We are afraid that the stress will be too much for his psyche.” He tells him, and James takes that answer the way that he hoped.

 

James jogs back to the black non-descript SUV that he had driven to get here. He quickly pops open the back and pulls out his rifle. It may be a little old, but it was something that he could trust to always hit the target. He may not be as good as Hawkeye (nobody is, but don’t tell the idiot that), but he nearly was with this weapon. With this, he’ll be able to watch the surrounding areas and to better protect the icon.

 

His feelings are strange. They are like the foggy ones from memories long wiped, but ones that had been imbedded so long ago that they couldn’t be completely destroyed. Nat’s memories that couldn’t be fully destroyed involved ballerinas, fire, and jewels. His own were more foggy than even hers, but were mostly about a small blonde boy, a kind older woman, and fighting.

 

Maybe the icon was faintly reminding him of those embedded memories that wouldn’t completely hide away. The icon also had blonde hair and blue eyes (at least according to the file Phil had him read over), just like the boy in his memories. The face though…something about the icon reminded him so much of that boy.

 

The boy was probably dead, anyway. Most of the people that he knew from the past were gone. The same with the people that he’s close to today. The life of an assassin is a solitary business, and way too many times having friends and family was more of a hindrance than anything else.

 

All he has to do is think about Clint. While James and Natalia had no connections to the world of civilians, Clint once had a brother.

 

Though looking at Clint reminds him of how much having friends has come in handy. While Clint and Nat were so much more than just his friends, he has found others at SHIELD that he was starting to consider as a friend. One example was Coulson, their handler that was so much more than just that. Coulson actually cared about them as people, and that was something that made him a step up from just being a handler.

 

James may have Coulson get someone to look into the boy from his memories. Who knows? Maybe the kid was still running around, albeit as an old man. It would be nice to be able to see more about his past.


	7. Chapter 7

**Natasha:**

Natasha curses the day that Director Fury assigned her to this assignment. Just because her two idiots had suicidal tendencies didn’t mean she wanted to add yet another one to her pile to watch over. Clint and James were enough for a legion of people, let alone for her. At least with her boys there was some sense to their madness. At the end of the day, they usually knew what they were doing. Usually.

 

Tony Stark, though? The man was a menace. So far he let his friend steal one of his highly guarded creations before hiding out in a giant donut. She is not kidding. The idiot was laying inside of a giant donut eating, shockers, donuts. How did this become her life? Right, she followed Clint into the arms of SHIELD.

 

She’s still going to blame James. He is supposed to be the sane one out of the three. Which, if she thinks about it, is kind of hilarious. The man had more holes in his memory than both her and Clint combined. Though, he has lived a bit longer than they have as well.

 

“Director?” She calls on the untraceable cell phone. “He’s at a donut shop. Looks like Mr. Stark is one step away from being insane.” Probably one step over, if she was going to be honest.

 

A man’s voice came over the line and how she wished she was talking to one of her idiots instead of the director right now. Or better, with one of them. Both would be preferred, but just one in her head would be nice at the moment. She has missed their eyes covering her back on this mission. “We’ll meet him at the donut shop.”

 

Of course they would meet him at the shop. What sounds like a meeting spot between the Director of a spy agency and a potential agent. Of course, who would ever even think of Tony Stark as an agent?

 

Iron Man, yes. Tony Stark? No. The man had too many issues to be considered viable.

 

Her report is going to be ridiculous this time. Absolutely ridiculous, and she didn’t even have Clint with her to blame.

 

A donut shop. This is worse than even the pizza incident.

 

 

 

**Clint:**

“Dr. Foster is a very smart woman.” Coulson introduced himself with the comment. Right after gathering the supplies from the doctor and her assistant, Coulson had taken off to deal with whatever the assignment James was on. Clint still didn’t know the whole story, and a part of being in this world was only knowing pieces.

 

Clint didn’t see the point in responding to that, and so he didn’t. Right now he didn’t feel much up to banter. He hasn’t been able to talk to either James or Nat for the past few days. Phil had a chance that he didn’t. Their last communication had ended pretty well, except it hadn’t. He was still avoiding them and everyone unless he absolutely had to.

 

“The silent treatment never suited you, Clint.” Coulson’s voice was as dry as ever, but Clint knew that Phil wasn’t going to drop it. Clint still kept his mouth shut, though. “Anything to report, Hawkeye?” After leaving, Phil had left Clint in charge.

 

Most of the younger agents had groaned at that, before quickly learning that while on a mission Clint was completely focused on the job. Being on a mission brought out a different side to Hawkeye that most people on base didn’t get a chance to see. On a mission, he was completely serious and ready at a moment’s notice. He didn’t get to the top of SHIELD’s most wanted list by being a clown.

 

Clint kept his focus down at the giant hammer that had yet to do anything. “Nothing, sir.” Really, this has been one of the more boring of the assignments that SHIELD has given him. Not THE most boring, but it was in the top fifty.

 

Coulson placed a hand on Clint’s shoulder, and Clint had to fight the urge to attack. Coulson might be able to take out most agents, but he would definitely have issues with Nat or James. “Agent Barton, have you spoken with Agents Romanoff and Barnes within the last 48 hours?” Coulson should know the answer to that.

 

So why was the handler asking?

 

Clint couldn’t wait for the sun to finally come up so he could get two hours of sleep. “No, sir.” Hopefully Coulson would just let it be. Clint was accepting of what was going to come, hopefully their handler would as well.

 

“Call them, Clint.” Agent Coulson ordered him. “I’ll have someone take over here. Go into town. Grab a bite to eat.”

 

“Yes, sir.” The bounce that was usually in his step wasn’t there, but Agent Barton would obey the order. Hawkeye? Not so much.

 

He’ll go into town to keep an eye on the blonde giant and the doctor. He may call the other two later. Maybe. Maybe not.

 

He just had to get his emotions under control before then. No reason to make a fool of himself in front of a camera and his lovers. He was enough of an embarrassment on his own.

 

 

 

**James:**

He waited on the rooftop. There was no reason for him to be on the ground whenever the icon woke up. No reason at all. His job was to protect it, not to be close enough to breathe the same air as it. Coulson left for the night, but now the man was back. Daylight was messing with his sightlines, but still he could barely look through the window to see the sleeping icon.

 

“You should call Agent Barton.” Coulson commented beside him in his nest. James’s nests may not be as literal as Clint’s (one time he actually created something like a bird’s nest for fun), but that is still what it is called.

 

Coulson has spent too much time with them if he can easily conclude the places his snipers would automatically take up position in.

 

His attention was still on the sleeping icon, but Coulson’s words didn’t make sense even in his heightened brain. “Why?” Clint was fine the last time they talked. It was common for them to go weeks, sometimes even months, without contacting the other two. It was part of life as SHIELD’s finest.

 

Coulson, in the way that he almost always is, remains impassive at the question. “How is Captain America doing?”

 

James shrugs, but still keeps his gaze on the window. “The icon is more active than it was before.” Coulson’s look was sharp, but James didn’t pay any attention.

 

“He.” Coulson corrected, but James didn’t respond. There was nothing really to say to that. So what if the icon was once human? Once doesn’t mean that it still is.

 

James still feels like The Asset more times than not, even when he has Nat and Clint by his side to remind him otherwise.

 

He watches as Agent Coulson makes his way down into the street. Through his scope he can see when the icon wakes up and has the realization that things weren’t as they seemed.

 

The icon was smart, smarter than SHIELD gave him credit for. A part of James was proud of that fact, even if he couldn’t quite understand the why of it.

 

The Icon broke down a wall and ran into the street. He…It, James automatically corrected, looked confused as it looked around the world that was so different than the one he/it last saw.

 

A part of James felt sorry for the icon, while he also knew that the icon would be fine. James was able to handle each new waking, the icon can surely handle this one, even if it was going to be one heck of a shock.

 

“Dismissed, Agent Barnes.” Coulson ordered over the comms. “Head back to base for a debriefing.” Was Coulson trying to keep him away from the icon since it woke up?

 

James pushed the thought away. “Yes, sir.” The job of an assassin, of a sniper, is to be in the shadows watching the other agents’ backs. Sometimes he was the ground, sometimes he was the shadows. This time he was fine being high in the shadows.

 

He didn’t want to deal with the icon while all of these incomplete thoughts kept circling in his mind. Maybe another day. Another time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I kind of like this style for the chapters. Right now I'm making the goal of an update to a story once a week. This means that this story can be updated next week, or about six weeks from now. I'm not abandoning the work, I'm just trying to give each piece enough time to make it up to a certain level of standard.


	8. Chapter 8

**Clint:**

The plan was for Clint to go into town to grab a sandwich or something before going back to his post on night watch. He was the only one Coulson trusted enough to not fall asleep on this mission. It was kind of boring, except for the long-haired blonde that tried to pull the hammer but failed.

 

Anyway, off topic.

 

The plan was to go to the diner in town, grab a sandwich or something, and then come right back. Maybe, definitely maybe, take a few photos to show Nat and James whenever he got back.

 

Big maybe, because Coulson would frown about that.

 

So, back on topic again. Clint went to the diner and grabbed himself a pepperoni sandwich since they didn’t serve pizza until afternoon. Which just made him sad. Pizza should be one of the main food groups, at least according to Clint.

 

It has all the food groups already in it, so why not make it one of its own? There’s the bread, meat, cheese, vegetables, fruit (pineapple pizza, yum). It totally should be.

 

Back to the story. So, Clint has his sandwich and decides to find himself a nice little hideaway up on a roof somewhere so he can watch the town with all of its people without them being able to see him. He also left his bow up there before going down to the diner. No way was he leaving it for the other people to play with.

 

So, he’s up there, watching everything go about normally when BAM. Giant robot thing.

 

He drops his peperoni sandwich, which is just a bummer because he was very hungry.

 

After the giant robot thing came, the long blond dude tried to fight him. Clint shot a few arrows, but he seriously need to come up with one that would work on this thing in case, you know, he happens upon even more giant robot things.

 

He finally pulls out the goo arrow and lets it fly when a glowing bubble thing happens and even MORE people jump out. Blonde dude is still the hottest one, even if the chick comes close.

 

More fighting. More oohing and aweing when the blonde dude somehow, someway, gets the hammer from earlier to fly from the site into his hand.

 

Blonde dude destroys the alien thing. Something about his brother. Yadda yadda.

 

Anyway, what the end is that somehow Clint dropped his communicator and broke it (lots of jumping from building to building [small towns have small buildings and low roofs, :,( which is no fun for Clint] so means no back-up for Team Portal People), sometime after dropping his peperoni sandwich.

 

Which, because he was in the place as a witness, meant another debriefing (booooorrrrriiiinnngggg). Who knew? Hot blonde dude really was Arthur with a hammer instead of a sword.

 

Clint still thinks James could have pulled it out with his metal arm. Totally would have.

 

 

 

**Natasha:**

Natasha walks in and easily injects the serum into Stark’s neck. He yelps, which makes her think fondly of Clint. He turns to her with a “Natalie?” Just as she stands across from him next to Fury.

 

This is going to be interesting.

 

She listens as Fury comes up with a plan, but doesn’t volunteer any information. What else is there to say? Stark is cured of the thing that he thought was going to kill him. Now, he just has to come up with a way to not get the poisoning again. Hopefully him not being poisoned would stop him on his, uh, more suicidal tendencies.

 

She happens to know another big baby that is prone to going down paths similar.

 

At the end of discussion, Fury has them leave to go to someplace where Stark will have all the material that he could possibly need.

 

Natasha thinks that her job is done. At least until Fury comes close enough to her to barely make a sound as he tells her, “Watch him.” Her lip reading skills came in handy this time.

 

But she has to fight the urge to roll her eyes and go off on her own. It’s been weeks since she’s seen her boys in person. Weeks since…well, weeks.

 

Iron Man better be with worth it, because Stark surely isn’t.

 

 

 

**James:**

James follows his orders and starts on his way back to base when one of the other agents (someone Barton mentioned in passing that James and Nat mostly ignored) stops by to try to talk to him. The guy’s name is Rum-something. He’s competent, James knows, but that’s about it.

 

They may need to communicate with more people than themselves, Fury, and Coulson. Though, James has no reason to. His small group of people he mostly trusts is enough to give him headaches. Adding to the group would only cause more things to worry about.

 

He nods when he’s supposed to. At least he thinks he nods at the right places because Rum-something finally leaves. It’s strange that the agent would choose now of all times to come to him. Odd, but nothing really to push the panic button for. Just something to keep an eye out for, is all.

 

James can’t stop the small smirk when he gets on his bike to start his ride back to base. Soon enough Natalia and Clint should be done with their assignments and they can be together during their down time. With each successful assignment, it seems that the red gets just a little bit lighter on their shoulders. A little bit, but never enough for it to not be gushing.

 

He’s thinking of Clint’s pizza and Natalia’s vodka when he takes notice of the vehicles following him. The situation is worrisome, but nothing that he hasn’t been through before. He can get out of this because he has something to get home to. Another two SUVS pull out of hidden drives and stop him in his tracks. He could easily get free, if Clint hadn’t been rubbing off on him.

 

‘Most people are just doing their jobs.’ Clint’s voice in his mind reminds him when he looks at strategies to escape. ‘I don’t like killing them, but I do because I have to to get back to you. Otherwise? Knocking them out works just as good.’

 

Non-lethal attacks. James can easily destroy the vehicles and leave them behind in destruction and death. He could, but he can also just evade and knock out the threats.

 

He goes for the second option.

 

James gets most of the people down and out before someone wearing black and what looks to be a SHIELD agent uniform comes at him. He doesn’t want to kill the guy, but the man was good. Really good at defending against James’ hits. The way the attacker evades tells James that the person was probably trained by Natalia. A few of her tells are in the way the attacker moves just before a hit.

 

Well, the tells that she gives the new recruits for fun or the people that she doesn’t particularly care for.

 

James hits at an angle to knock the mask away. The man is Rum-something from earlier. But before he can hit, another voice calls out “yablochnyy sidr”.

 

James freezes in mid-swing before going into a relaxed stance. His mind yells at him to keep fighting, but his body was obeying commands drilled into him over decades.

 

How could Rum-something know of the code words? How is that even possible?

 

Many of the people that he knocked out (instead of kill, Natalia would so be getting onto him right now) came towards him and motioned him into one of the vans with an open back door. The van starts moving, and James keeps track of where they are taking him. Natalia and Clint will come for him, he just has to stay strong enough until they arrive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it's been a while on this story. I'm trying to finish this one and another one in the next few months.
> 
> Love comments.


	9. Chapter 9

**James:**

James mentally yells for himself to fight back and get away. He knows he can take out these people, but his body won’t obey. He’s back to being the Winter Soldier, something that he never thought he would be again. He sees the facility and is able to break from the hold long enough to take out three guards before he’s hit with something, most likely a tranquilizer, that calms him back down and into their control.

 

“Seems It has some idea of what’s about to happen, eh?” Another person, wearing a lab coat, joins what remains of the guards. Remains, because James didn’t make the same mistake twice.

 

Lethal. Non-lethal is when you have the upper hand.

 

James snarls at his captive, but doesn’t leap to attack. He’s taking back control, but not enough to stop what was going to happen. The Machine comes into range, and they say even more words to bring him further under their control.

 

Once he’s back under his own control, he’s going to kill every single person who can even remotely know those, and then burn every shred of paper that can have those written on it. No one is going to be able to control him like this again. No one.

 

No one is going to make him a threat to his family. No one is going to have the knowledge to rip him from Natalia and Clint again. No one.

 

James mentally pulls his memories deep inside, hoping that he’ll be able to keep at least a few of them when the Wipe comes. Just a few would be enough to pause him to give his family a chance to take him out.

 

He sits in the chair and is strapped down. He holds onto Clint and Natalia’s face as long as he can as memories start to be taken. The ones most recent go first.

 

Natalia and Clint.

 

He sees the memories just before they are wiped away. Training at SHIELD. Pizza night with Phil. Sparring with…Sparring with Natalia in…in a house. Shooting with…Shooting with…

 

Natalia

 

Nat

 

N

 

James doesn’t remember. Why can’t he remember? Then, he forgets that he forgot.

 

He is the Winter Soldier, not James.

 

He is the Asset.

 

It is the Asset.

 

It is ready for orders.

 

 

 

**Natasha:**

That idiotic…Natasha couldn’t even finish the thought without getting furious. She thought Clint was bad about following orders. Now? Now she’s never going to yell at him for going off half-baked again. Tony Stark…Ugh. The man was just asking for her to shoot him.

 

Eventually he did come back. Eventually. Then he acted as though it was no big deal!

 

If he had been…

 

But Stark wasn’t trained like her, James, and even Clint was. Stark was a play-boy without any consideration for the rules and lives that he ruins. At least he was getting more aware of what he was doing, which was something in the right direction. Maybe, eventually, Tony Stark will be the kind of man that Natasha could recommend.

 

However, that day was not today.

 

She spends twenty hours in debrief before they let her out of the stuffy meeting room filled with people that hadn’t been there and could never understand. They were office rats, with only Coulson and Fury there with any potential at understanding how the lines can get blurred out in the real world. She will side with them because that’s what Clint wanted, and this place was a bit better than the alternative.

 

Better to have one agency having your back than for all to be hunting you.

 

Natasha contemplating what kind of strange pizza concoction her and James would end up having to eat to not hurt Clint’s feelings when the meeting finally ended. Instead of being allowed to leave, Fury had motioned for her to follow him just outside of the doors. It was a mere prolonging of plan to follow him, and quite a bit more prudent to just obey.

 

At least for now.

 

Director Fury leads the way further into Headquarters and up to his office. Coulson being with them had her mind lead to the conclusion that another assignment was going to be assigned to her. There goes the plans of hiding out with her boys watching yet another show that Clint felt like educating them on.

 

“We have a situation, Romanoff.” Fury starts as the doors close behind them. He pushes a button that scrambles any potential hearing devices in the area.

 

She doesn’t move from attention, taking in body languages and her surroundings with a critical eye. “Sir?” Situation could mean any number of things. Some could be handled with a well-placed bullet. Others? Months of ripping apart an enemy from the inside.

 

Fury looks to Phil before glancing back at her, as though trying to determine what Natasha’s reaction was going to be about the news that was going to be delivered. “Agent Barnes has disappeared. The bodies left behind leave us to believe it was under duress.”

 

Natasha’s eyes harden, and The Black Widow takes over. She had to be the ruthless assassin/spy to get what needed to be accomplished done. “Give me the file.”

 

“Nat.” Phil, because his tone wasn’t professional nor was his expression. “You don’t have to do this. We have…”

 

“I know him best.” Her voice brook no argument, and she picked the manila file off the desk. “I know our enemies best. I’ll bring him back. Nobody takes my boys. Nobody.”

 

They didn’t bother arguing with her as she leaves after their permission. Who knows? It had probably been Fury’s plan all along to send out The Widow. The best to go after the best, of course.

 

Hadn’t that been the plan with Hawkeye?

 

 

 

**Clint:**

“The dudes and chick came from a swirling blue thing in the sky. ‘Kay?” Clint told the people debriefing for what felt like the hundredth time. (Just the third, but they should have gotten it the first time.) Clint had spent most of his life hearing impaired, so them not catching it was just getting on his last straw.

 

And he really wanted to get some sleep with his two favorite people. Maybe more than sleep, if he can convince them that learning ‘ALIENS DO EXIST’ hasn’t completely fried his brain.

 

An older woman, and someone that hasn’t had to deal with his antics that often, rubs her forehead in annoyance. After a moment, she looks back up at the agent who never answers in specifics. “Was it a vehicle or a portal?”

 

Clint took that as his cue to just lay back and ignore the disapproving looks given his way. They should ask the scientist, not him. “I don’t know?”

 

“Question or statement, Agent?” One of the others (why is there always three? and where’s Coulson? Usually he has to be here for these kind of things), a gray-haired man who looks way too young to have that much gray, asks.

 

A good question, and one Clint wasn’t certain about. “Both? Looked more like a portal, but the doctor should know more about that stuff.” Jane Foster, not that Clint was going to let them know how much he knows and remembers.

 

The job was done, and THAT was the most important thing. The giant robot-alien thing was destroyed with a minimal civilian casualty. Most of the damage was done to property, which can always be replaced. The alien people had cared about life, which just means that they had an ‘ok’ in Clint’s book. Even long-blonde-Arthur.

 

“We are asking you, Agent Barton.” The woman speaks up again, and Clint totally prefers the dude that’s actually reading the report he had spent four hours working on for this meeting.

 

Clint never writes reports, but felt he should this time around. As the only Agent in the vicinity of the attack, he thought he should follow the rules for once instead of putting ‘stuff blew up, mission accomplished, day saved, I’m getting pizza’ and letting Nat, James, or (usually) Phil fill in the rest of the blanks.

 

Phil fill.

 

Clint will have to remember that one.

 

Now, listening to the gray-haired dude and pinched-face woman, he’s starting to rethink his thought process. By filling out the forms, they must think he’s more than just the bow-and-arrow guy. Which just causes all sorts of problems.

 

The dude from the back, who look a lot like Phil, now that he thinks about it, finally puts down the report to look at him. “You said ‘dimensional-portal’ and not ‘time-space’. Care to explain your conclusion?”

 

Clint was about to make a smart comment when the guy’s earnest expression has him bite his tongue. “Dr. Foster was doing research about wormholes. In the SHIELD training book there’s something about sacrifices and universe travel. I don’t know. The dudes and chick that came from the portal either came from a really bad film set that was doing something about Vikings, or another world with awful fashion sense. I’m betting on the later. The doctor with the research is the one you want to talk to about that, not me.”

 

He thought about making a dramatic exit there, but figured he didn’t want to deal with the reprimand that doing such would give him.

 

He was still tempted to when the gray-haired dude was opening his mouth, just to shut it when the door behind Clint opened and shut.

 

Based on the footsteps…yeah, definitely Fury and Coulson. Their steps were way too soft to be anybody else’s in SHIELD’s. Except for Nat and James, oh, and himself. Not that he’s mentally gloating or anything.

 

“Agent Barton, come.” Fury gives the order, and while he doesn’t go well with orders, Clint jumped to that one just to escape this one.

 

He doesn’t ask questions, because only the most time sensitive and secure information would have Fury come himself to gather up an agent. Something was wrong.

 

The go down a flight of stairs to a place that looks little bit better than a basement. If he was paranoid (which he totally isn’t, even if he does have weapons on him that only Nat and James have been able to find), he would be fleeing right about now. But…Clint knows and trusts the two men in front of him.

 

“What’s going on?” Clint finally asks, as the two men that he thought of as sort-of parental turned to look at him with their combined three eyed. He recognizes the security code that was put in the pad next to the door. High security. Something must really be going wrong.

 

Phil is the one to take the lead this time, thinking that his agent would need it to be coming from him. “Agent Barnes is missing, most likely taken by an enemy.” Clint heads for the door, but Phil puts a hand on his agent’s shoulder to stop him from going on the hunt. “Agent Romanoff has been sent after him, Agent Barton. You are to be on another assignment.”

 

Clint wants to question the orders, but he bites his protests back. Nobody send Romanoff anywhere where she doesn’t want to go. Since she didn’t wait for him, Nat wants to do this on her own. He has to trust her to know what to do, and when to come for help.

 

“I know, Clint.” Phil squeezes his shoulder, and nods to Fury. “She’s the best, and she’ll bring him back. You are needed somewhere else.”

 

Agent Barton looks at both his director and his handler before nodding his agreement. Even if everything was yelling at him to help Nat in finding James, Fury and Phil have their reasons for pulling him. This is how they worked. Trust. Nat will bring James back, and Clint will be keeping the place ready for them.

 

Clint goes to military attention. “What is my assignment, sirs?” He must be this person, and he will be. Later he can be the man with one lover missing and another one hunting for them.

 

“You are coming with me.” Director Fury tells him, professional as only the super spy could be. “We are going to check out a blue glowing alien scepter.”

 

Mentally, Clint groans. This is what he gets for going into town for a sandwich.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm uniting the different movies. Yay!
> 
> Hope to hear from whoever is still reading this. This story, Excalibur, and Being Neighbors are the stories I'm focusing on finishing this year. Hopefully I will get there. Here's another chapter in that direction.  
> :)
> 
> I love comments and adore kudos. The more I know what you like, the more of the same I can give.
> 
> See you readers next chapter. Later, folks.


	10. Chapter 10

**Agent Barton:**

Just because certain personality traits are more distinctive about an individual in different circumstances, it does not mean that they are separate individuals. Each of us shows a different side depending on what is needed for a job. In this case, the job requires an obedient security guard.

 

Clint can be an obedient security guard.

 

Okay, not really.

 

Agent Barton knows that the only reason why he was chosen for this trip was because of the close encounter he had with the previous aliens. So, anything involving aliens will have him pack up his bag and go on a road trip.

 

Fun times.

 

The facility was kind of boring. A lot of scientists ran around, talking about power sources and potentials for discovery. All Clint really heard in all of that was trouble. Anything new was something to be looked at with a little bit of caution, and not whatever these people were running around with. Power is something that people kill for.

 

Hawkeye has been hired enough times for wet work, even after word got around of him going legit with an agency.

 

Which is neither here nor now as they finish up the tour as Dr. Gregory Johannsen finishes the tour of the facility. “As you can see, we are moving along splendidly!!!”

 

Fury nods, as though agreeing before turning his one eye on Clint. It was a silent question, and one that Clint loathed to answer. He slightly shook his head, and his boss turned back to the doctor. “I see.” Before silently motioning for the tour to keep on going.

 

The security wasn’t strong enough to keep out the people that came through the barrier. At least not Hulk proof. Someone with enough fire power could easily get in. Or someone with enough skills.

 

Coulson would already have had them hand him the scepter thing within minutes of being there.

 

Natasha would have been able to walk in and out of the facility with it without any hindrance.

 

James? Well, there would have been plenty of bodies, but he still would have made it through.

 

Clint doesn’t even want to know how Fury would get it, but he knows his boss would get it if he really wanted to.

 

They would have to retrain in basic security measures, which he hopes he won’t be roped into doing. He really really hopes not.

 

The tour suddenly ends at the sound of blaring alarms and every weapon coming up to point at a black clothed man with a weird shaped hat on his head. The bullets appear to pass through him, and no one was getting a chance to get in his way before he grabbed the scepter where it was on display. He smiled as the scientists ran and the agents kept trying to shoot at him.

 

Trying, because nothing was piercing him.

 

_It’s a projection._

 

Barton looks around, trying to find where the person was before noting a shadow moving slightly different that a shadow should. He lets off a bolt that hits it. Not enough to damage, but enough for the projection to slightly waver.

 

“Smart.” The shadow says, the real scepter already in his hands. The man starts to head towards Fury and a thousand different scenarios run through Clint’s mind.

 

Everyone that involves something happening to Fury ends in a lot of death. Who is the person that is most likely to be stopped?

 

“Hey!” Clint yells out, already mentally berating himself as every type of fool there could possibly be. This was a dumb idea. Not his dumbest, but close to the top. “Gonna give me back my arrow?”

 

The black-haired man turns and his gaze sharpens. “You’ll do.” The man tells him and presses the scepter to Clint’s chest.

 

The pain is unlike anything that he’s ever felt before, and Agent Barton was trained by SHIELD to withstand torture. It tears through him, pushing everything down and turning him into a thing. His mind is there, but not completely. The compulsion to serve the man in front of him colors everything.

 

_Sorry guys._

 

 

 

**Asset:**

The cold seeps through the skin and rages through his blood. It sinks into everything that he is, yanking him into the embrace of a deathlike sleep. It knows what this is like. It is the one thing that he remembers no matter how many wipes they put him through. This time, they are wiping everything. There will be no chance of a stray memory involving the two that led him astray from the Mission.

 

Two?

 

Red hair and the flash of an arrow flitters through his thoughts. It doesn’t worry about things like that. Soon even those pieces will be erased. Soon.

 

Another Mission, or the memory of one that came before. His Controllers come in, photographs in hand. The start of a new one, then.

 

“Director Nick Fury.” The main leader of this team flashes the picture up for The Asset to memorize. “Mission: Destroy.”

 

It doesn’t respond, but understands that kind of mission. There was to be no chances of survival for the one-eyed man in the photograph. Whoever he is, he soon will be no more.

 

Another photograph is place on top of the first. “Captain America.” The face in the photos is familiar, but not enough to make It fight the training. Anything can make something remotely familiar. “Mission: Eliminate.” Not the primary target, then, but still a target.

 

It memorizes the face. One main target. One preferred.

 

Another photograph. A third target on one mission. “Natasha Romanov.” This photograph was of a woman wearing sunglasses to cover half of her face. “Mission: Eliminate.”

 

The flash of red hair sparks something inside of him, and The Asset roars out in anger. The handlers back out as different men in tactical suits come in armed with shock sticks and guns. Someone in a lab coat rushes in, pushing buttons to bring The Asset back under control. The cold floods back in, lulling The Asset back into darkness.

 

“Need another wipe. It still remembers.”

 

 

 

**Black Widow:**

James has enemies that span over decades. To know who took him, the first step is to go back to the scene of the crime. Natasha travels to the secure location that had been used to house Captain America before he broke the cover and was thrown into the 21st century. Steven Rogers was going to have a lot to catch up on to ever be the person that SHIELD wants him to be.

 

Natasha follows the trail that James’ vehicle took from the site. From the reports, Agent Barnes got into the vehicle alone before driving off. Later on, after he missed check in, the other agents followed his route and saw a scuffle. The assailants are unknown, but considered hostile. Blood was left at the scene, but not enough for someone to have bled out.

 

James being alive is the only option.

 

She follows the trail of the ones who took one of her boys. The tried to obscure the tracks, but she’s learned a thing or two over the years. The tracks she’s following are from a SHIELD vehicle, if she’s not mistaken. The lab rats will have to come back and verify, but she’s nearly positive. “Team Leader. Tracks are of our own.”

 

“Come again, Widow?” Coulson asks over the secure line.

 

Natasha knows that such a thing would need verifying, but the evidence was pointing straight to it. “The tracks match our own. Either stolen or a rogue had ahold of one.”

 

“Copy that.” Coulson answers, and she goes back to following the trail. She’s able to go a bit further before hitting black top.

 

She turns back around, making another sweep of the area. For a moment she wishes for Clint’s eyes to find all of the missing pieces that she could potentially be overlooking.

 

Finally, she goes back to where the scuffle occurred. She bends down, finding the weapon that one of them must have left. Not SHIELD issue, but something just as distinctive.

 

“Coulson, I need a plane.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's the update!!! Woohoo!
> 
> This story is now back in rotation while my muse is being my friend. I have an idea for how to do the next chapter, and a few more after that. Yay!
> 
> Can't wait to hear from any of you readers that may still be out there reading. :)


	11. Chapter 11

**Clinton Francis Barton:**

_Blue._

Everything is tinted blue. His memories are wide open for his King to read. Loki. Master Loki. Each painful memory that is tilted through before being discarded as unimportant. Born Clinton Francis Barton, codename Hawkeye, has enough information to be useful.

 

Loki passes over the man’s thoughts without a flicker of an eye lash. Boring. Dull. The only usefulness is…Ahh. There it is.

 

“Barton.” Loki commands, and the being that was once Clint doesn’t acknowledge but Loki knows that it will obey. Petty humans. So easy to control. “Every enemy of SHIELD. Find them for me.”

 

Barton turns and goes to obey. There are plenty of people out there wanting SHIELD to fall, it will be no time at all to find many to join Loki’s army.

 

He uses his skills to start tracking down the enemies of SHIELD that at any other point he would be taking out. Instead…Instead he was recruiting them.

 

A small, non-blue tinted memory tried to break through before being pulled back into the swirling mist. Whatever it was, it didn’t matter.

 

The only thing that mattered…The only thing was…The only thing was to…was to…

 

 _Serve Loki_.

 

**Natasha:**

Coulson is efficient when it comes to getting his agents the supplies that they need. Honestly, he is efficient in most things. Anything else and he wouldn’t be the Handler for the three best agents that SHIELD has to offer, even if two happen to be Russian assassins brought in by a deaf carnie who isn’t so deaf anymore.

 

Clint’s words, not theirs.

 

Natasha takes the plane across the ocean, following the clue left behind. This was the same as any other hunt for a target. No matter how careful the target was, there was always clues left behind where they once were. The good ones kept to crowded areas, letting themselves blend into the crowds of people and having the civilians cover the tracks for themselves.

 

These were professionals, except their target wasn’t with them willingly.

 

However, that would have been the dream trail. This is reality, and in reality all Black Widow had to follow was a weapon made by a very exclusive arms dealer in the Middle East. He sold his weapons with payment of favors. The markings had been distinctive enough for her to travel this far to interrogate him.

 

The problem will be in finding the man. Leaving his calling card on everything he designed may not be the smartest move, but he wasn’t as foolish as that piece of information would lead someone to believe. The dealer was clever, but not as clever as he thought himself to be.

 

She switched into civilian clothing and tried playing as the worse thief possible. Seriously, she had to go in there and smash a window before security even noticed that she was in the private area. Amateurs.

 

See, Natasha could just question the men by using a bit of charm (which really wasn’t working for her time table), with violence (which could potentially end in losing a known threat and giving chance for an unknown to rise), or to make them believe that they had the control (which they never did or ever will).

 

She lets them tie her to a chair in a dark room (first floor level, best for maximum destruction if she had an explosive and a suicidal mission). Their questioning methods were slightly above mediocre. Just slightly. She wouldn’t hire them to watch her pet poodle (which she doesn’t have).

 

Natasha concluded that they knew nothing when one of the muscle finally came back in from his bathroom break. He had a phone in his hand and confusion on his face.

 

“It’s for you.” He holds the phone out for Natasha to take.

 

“We need you to come in.” Coulson sounds over the phone.

 

This wasn’t part of the plan. “Are you kidding?” She hasn’t had the time to find James yet. “I haven’t completed the mission yet!”

 

“This takes precedence.” Coulson tells her over the phone. What could be more important than finding the missing part of her trio??  
  
The Winter Soldier has to be found. “Look, you can’t pull me out of this right now.” They swore to always find the others, and Natasha has no wish to back out on it.

 

“Natasha.” Coulson’s voice isn’t the same as it was as on a mission. This time, the piece that was Phil was poking through the calm demeanor. “Clint’s been compromised.”

 

First James. Now Clint? “Give me a sec.” What was wrong with her boys?

 

A few fast moves later and she’s standing with the phone back in hand. “Where is he?” Coulson would know which he she was talking about.

 

Only two people on the planet mattered enough to make her drop everything. James was one, and Clint the other.

 

“Unknown.”

 

Two for two. Both of them were missing. “But he’s alive.” Just like with James, there could be no other option. They had to be alive.

 

“We think so.” Coulson quickly moves on, stopping her from asking any more questions. “You need to get the big guy.”

 

Natasha let out a sharp laugh at that. “Now, Coulson. Stark trusts me about as far as he can throw me. While wearing his suit.”

 

“I have Stark.” Phil tells her, and she’s still on the move. “You get the big guy.”

 

She suddenly pauses. “You aren’t sending me after Clint?” While the mission’s priority may be to go and get a Dr. Banner, her priority is to get her people.

 

“He’s with the enemy right now. He’ll be coming to us.”

 

At least she’ll be back down to only having to find one, though needing to knock some sense into two.

 

**Winter Soldier:**

“This is madness!” A male voice echoes outside of the Asset’s frozen prison. “Anymore wipes could completely compromise the control foundation!”

 

The Asset hears with a detached sense of now quite curiosity, but the closest that it can get to in this state. The only conclusion it needs from this information is that they plan on putting it back into the machine. The controllers are divided on whether this is necessary, or not.

 

Someone taps on the glass. “Without the wipe, the control foundation is compromised. It can have no memories of Black Widow, understood?” Slight thumps as though someone is tapping on the glass in thought reaches into the cold sleep of the Asset. “It has…control issues whenever she is mentioned. It needs to have no memories that can compromise this mission, understood?”

 

“How about the new Hawk guy thing.” The man must have been waving his hand because something suddenly knocked against the glass.

 

“What about him?”

 

“They left with him.” Slight scrapping of something being cleaned. “Wouldn’t he be a threat to the mission?”

 

Flesh hitting flesh echoes in the frozen water. “John, shut up. Hawkguy is only in the new memories. Those memories would have already been wiped.”

 

_Hawkeye_

“Ivan.” The other man’s voice turned into a nasally whine. “I told you. I’m Ivan here, not John.”

 

The sound of flesh hitting flesh is back, except it sounds less like a slap and more like not so friendly pats. “Now. Now. John. You are no Ivan.”

 

Voices fade away and the Asset starts to fade back into the darkness of forced sleep. A flash of red hair, tinkling laugh, and a man’s humored voice floats into memory.

 

_It’s HawkEYE, not guy. What’s wrong with you people?_

Cold.

 

Darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just realized that I totally didn't do Barton's scene like it was in cannon last chapter. Oops. I really should rewatch them instead of trying to remember something from years ago. Oops.
> 
> Well, here's the next chapter. I kept sort of close to Natasha's role. That was the plan for this work. I'm pulling it into cannon, sort of, but not really. Hope you guys are enjoying the journey so far.
> 
> Also...just realized a few days ago I already had one segment already written while flipping between pieces. A bit less work for me. Woohoo!


	12. Chapter 12

**The Asset:**

They thawed It out again, even more careful this time than they have been before. Guns were trained in its direction from the moment the warming up process started. There was to be no chances of escape. This was the best chance for Hydra to accomplish what needed to be done. The Asset was back, but still not controllable.

 

It was time to get rid of the reason for the betrayal.

 

The Asset obediently steps from its prison and walks to the chair with a few quick orders. They expected more of a fight. Usually it doesn’t take well to seeing the machine set up. This wasn’t an unheard of experience, but it was one that didn’t occur very often.

 

It was obeying.

 

The Asset sits in the chair, nonlethal weapon pointed at it for any moment of disobedience. The need for another wipe was obvious from its reaction the last time it had been pulled from the cold sleep. Being put on ice must have calmed its aggressions.

 

However, one must never forget that this was a dangerous creature capable of killing everyone in the room. They had no one on hand that would be able to take it out if things were to go sideways again. The only thing keeping it under control was years of programming and the weapons pointed in its direction. Weapons that it could easily get rid of.

 

And programming that they were about to make dents into.

 

Every year another layer was put on to reinforce the control, and to build up any holes that were found. To erase everything about The Black Widow from its mind will take years of that reinforcement away. At this point, they weren’t completely sure what will occur with all of those layers being stripped away.

 

It could go wild. It could break free of whatever control they had over it and wipe out everyone in the facility. It wasn’t unheard of for experiments from the era it came from to go insane. Yelena was an example and she was created years after it was. To take it back to that time…

 

The plan was insane, but what the bosses wanted the bosses got.

 

They strapped it into the machine and everyone watched as the electricity and serums that no one alive knew much about entered into it. It screamed as the machine ripped out pieces that it didn’t even know that it had. Memories that had been repressed before were completely ripped away to leave behind the Asset that was before the Red Room.

 

This Asset never heard of the Black Widow Program. This Asset was just a few years into being under Hydra’s control. Only the most basic of control measure were still in place.

 

Hopefully, that’ll be enough to keep it under control.

 

One of the handlers wearing a pair of black gloves approaches with a stack of photos. With each one he holds up a list of words are repeated. Apparent nonsense for the average listener, but instructions for The Asset sitting with a tired and, dare anyone to think it, rebellion on its face.

 

The Asset doesn’t rebel when each photo is held up to it.

 

“Sir, The Asset is ready.”

 

 

 

**The Archer:**

“Archer, come here.” Loki commanded of the man he had decided would be a good second-in-command for his army. The man knew his enemies and would be in the inside key needed to quickly annihilate them.

 

Archer’s face is void of expression, but Loki doesn’t need people. Loki needs soldiers to get the job done. The Archer stands at his side, waiting for an order. Now this was the life that Loki deserved. Obedience of this rabble that Thor claimed to care for. The people on this planet were barely above ape status.

 

Fools.

 

“This planet is just asking for a strong leader.” Loki tells The Archer, proud of his plan and needing someone to hear it. Even if that someone was completely under his control. “Petty divides. Wars. You humans really are just one step up from the muck.”

 

Something in The Archer’s expression has Loki pause. There was a flash of just a moment when the blue faded before returning. Loki’s control may not be as complete as he thought. How could that possibly be?

 

The Archer nods in obedience before his face is suddenly grabbed in too strong hands. Something in him says that he could easily get out of this position before suddenly it fades out. A flash of light reflecting off of metal comes to mind along with strands of red hair flying in the wind before suddenly going back inside to keep him in the haze.

 

“You’re not as weak as your masters believe…Hm.” Loki mutters before suddenly letting go to think on more important matters. This was the way to show Odin just how good his second rate adopted son could do. While Thor runs off to try to destroy a whole race, Loki was bringing a whole world to heel with just a bit of magic and a cunning plan. “Go watch the scientists. Find what you need to know to have me rule.”

 

**The Black Widow:**

It didn’t take Natasha long to find Bruce Banner, SHIELD had him on their radar since the day he took off for places unknown. More like places where people desperate for help and were willing to turn a blind eye, or even have the ability to know, to him. Banner was doctor and at his heart he still cared about other people.

 

Foolish, but an admirable trait.

 

“Agent Romanoff. Captain Rogers.” Her handler introduced her to the frozen icon with what she knew was controlled excitement. Everyone on their little team knew how much of a Captain America fanboy the usual stoic agent was. It was cute, in a childish sort of way.

 

“Ma’am.” Rogers acknowledges her presence in formality.

 

She was a spy, not a soldier. “Hi.” She tells him before turning to the person that she usually takes her orders from. Right now, not happily. “They need you on the bridge. Face time.”

 

Romanoff is the one to lead the way further into the ship. Alone with a chance to question the man who James had disappeared right after watching. “There was quite the buzz around here, finding you in the ice.” She opened, giving him the chance to respond. Seeing the crowded place, she changed tactics. This would also be a good time to embarrass Coulson just a bit before meeting up with him. “I thought Coulson was gonna swoon.” It would also give her an idea into the character of Steven Rogers, and if all of this was even worth it. “Did he ask you to sign his Captain America trading cards yet?”

 

That breaks through his formality to have him stare at her in incredulity. “Trading cards?”

 

He wasn’t full of himself. Good. Maybe there was a chance that this plan of Coulson’s won’t go completely up in smoke. “They’re vintage, he’s very proud.” Three of the team were already on site, too bad it wasn’t the three that should already have been there.

 

Strike Team Delta was supposed to be here, and in one piece. Not scattered who knows where. One most likely taken by Hydra (at least that’s where the trail was leading Natasha to believe) and the other under the control of a child with too much power in his hands.

 

**Captain Steven Rogers:**

“Gentlemen.” Fury greets them and Steve hand Fury the ten dollars he owes him. This really is a surprising development. Afterwards Fury goes over to Banner and extends a hand. “Doctor, thank you for coming.”

 

When he went into the ice all those years ago he never thought he’d wake up to this. Heck, he didn’t even he would ever wake up. Steve thought he was going to die that day he sent the plane into ocean.

 

“Thanks for asking nicely.” Banner tells Fury, and something tells Steve there’s probably a lot more to the story than those mild words were portraying. “So, uh…how long am I staying?”

 

Good point. Technically Banner is on the run from the US government. It could easily be that he was brought in on false pretenses just to have him confined indefinitely. Though…though Steve had to still believe in the good of things, even from this agency that dragged him out of the cold.

He heard them keep talking, but a sweep of the room had his attention land on Agent Romanoff. It wasn’t because she was beautiful, even if she was, it was more of how she was looking at the computer screen. It wasn’t betrayal, but more like a sense of loss and determination. Steve just met her, but he recognizes that look. He had a similar one whenever he decided to go after Bucky.

 

“That’s still not gonna find them in time.” Agent Romanoff joined in the conversation and Steve kept his main focus on her even while taking note of the others. She wasn’t just talking about the Tesseract.

 

Steve couldn’t tell if it was fear of not getting the person on the screen back, or fear of what could be happening to him.

 

He didn’t think it could be fear of what the man could be doing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading. Can't wait to hear from anyone who is reading this. :)
> 
>  
> 
> Note: Fear isn't really the word I was going to use, but couldn't figure one out that fit what I wanted to say better. So I left it.


	13. Chapter 13

**The Archer:**

Loki didn’t even have to give orders before The Archer was racing off to obey them. It wasn’t even orders, not really. More like a compulsion to do everything for the man claiming to be a god. Which is why he had done what he never would have dreamed of doing.

 

He’d hunted down the enemies of SHIELD, not to kill them but to recruit them. This wasn’t starting out to be the best day for Clint Barton, aka Hawkeye.

 

“Put it over there!” Dr. Selvig yells to the scientists that Barton had hunted down for the specific purpose of helping the good doctor. “Where did you find all these people?” Barton glances at the tablet, just to be certain he had what he had been looking for.

 

Iridium. “SHIELD has no shortage of enemies, doctor.” The Archer, Barton, turns the tablet so Selvig can get a look at what he’d been looking up. “Is this the stuff you need?” He asks, just to be certain even if he already knew the answer.

 

“Yeah, iridium. It’s found in meteorites, it forms anti-protons.” Selvig explains, one step away from sounding like a mad scientist. “It’s very hard to get hold of.”

 

Clint would have added a laugh to that understatement. Agent Barton would have looked at the doctor before giving a sardonic comment. Hawkeye wouldn’t have said anything before racing off to do the next order. “Especially if SHIELD knows you need it.” The Archer was close to Agent Barton in his response.

 

“Well, I didn’t know!” Selvig exclaims, showing pieces of the personality that Loki had decided to not wipe away. “Hey!” He calls to where he just now noticed Loki. “The Tesseract is showing me so much. It’s more than just knowledge, it’s…truth.”

 

_Each perspective has a different truth._

 

Which is precisely what Hawkeye, Agent Barton, Clint, and The Archer have in common. It is so much easier to see whole picture when you are not in the center of it.

 

“I know.” Loki tells the scientist as though talking to a child. “What did it show you, Agent Barton?” He asks of the man with the tablet.

 

Loki could have plucked it from his brain, but what fun would that have been? The best part of controlling someone is when they get to the point of wanting to be controlled. “My next target.” Barton answers, multiple areas of his mind looking through probabilities and angles.

 

Loki looks at his Archer, and sees something that no one else seemed to see. “Tell me what you need.” A mortal with a fighting soul, and brains hidden beneath the carnie exterior.

 

A valuable asset, even if it hadn’t been his first choice. This was probably the better option, long term. Maybe. Possibly.

 

“I’ll need a distraction.” Barton tells Loki before grabbing his bow. It was a simple request to distract the fools Thor wanted to protect. “And an eyeball.”

 

That was a curious necessity, but one Loki trusted his Archer to know what he needed. Especially with the Tesseract leading their paths.

 

 

 

**Steve Rogers:**

“No, no. It’s fine.” Steve tells the man in the black suit. It really wouldn’t be a problem to sign a few cards, even if he can’t believe that those had been created while he had been frozen.

 

The future was a strange place at times. Very strange. He’d been expecting flying cars, not…all of this.

 

“It’s a vintage set.” Agent Phil Coulson starts talking about his cards with pride. “It took me a couple of years to collect them all.” Steve glances at the screens, still surprised at how far things have changed. “Near mint, slight foxing around the edges, but…”

 

“We got a hit.” Another Agent, Sitwell, Rogers remembers, interrupts Coulson from the cards. “Sixty-seven percent match. Weight, cross match, seventy-nine percent.”

 

The card completely from mind, Coulson seems completely focused on the information the other agent was telling him. “Location?” The focus with which he asks was almost like the hidden focus that Romanoff had when looking at her fellow agent.

 

They had no intention of letting Loki get away.

 

“Stuttgart, Germany.” Agent Jasper Sitwell tells them, looking at the screen with a bit of confusion. “Konigstrasse.” This wasn’t what one would expect of a wanted fugitive. “He’s not exactly hiding.”

 

A target in focus. This was something that Steve Rogers knew. Being a hero? Not really. He had just been a soldier doing what needed to be done.

 

The loss of his team…his best friend…Peggy. To everyone else on the Helicarrier it was years ago. To Steve, the loss wasn’t nearly that long ago.

 

“Captain, you’re up.” Director Nick Fury tells him and that’s all Rogers needs to push back the feeling of being overwhelmed.

 

He nods, getting into the mindset to see this mission through, and leaves the room to finish preparations. They had a crazy man with a delusion of power.

 

Just like old times.

 

 

 

**The Asset:**

“Should we send It out?” A voice, male, invades The Asset’s dreams and floats around with faces that It shouldn’t be able to remember.

 

Except It does.

 

The Asset dreams of a scrawny blonde with more guts than brains.

 

The Asset dreams of red hair and the smell of gun fire.

 

The Asset dreams of arrows and targets with another blonde balancing up in a tree.

 

“They are waiting.” Another voice, someone that it isn’t as cautious as the first one speaks up. The Asset doesn’t question but just absorbs whatever information that they are going to slip out.

 

Maybe…maybe someday The Asset will remember It’s dreams when awake.

 

“For what?”

 

The blonde in the tree is the first to fade along with the circle targets. The arrows, though…the arrows fly in and out.

 

Next to hide in the darkness is the red-haired woman. Nothing remained of her, at least not enough to poke back through. They had been very thorough in erasing her from his thoughts.

 

“To see if this new player will weaken SHIELD. Enemy of an enemy becomes a friend, yes?”

 

The scrawny kid…Yeah. A very old memory already flayed around the edges careens off.

 

 

 

**Agent Romanoff:**

“You know, the last time I was in Germany and saw a man standing above everybody else, we ended up disagreeing.” Natasha hears Captain Steve Rogers over the coms and fights the urge to roll her eyes at the theatrics. Subtlety isn’t proving to be anybody’s forte. “I’m not the one who’s out of time.”

 

Natasha Romanoff maneuvers the quinjet so that the machine gun points right at the man who dared to take what wasn’t his to take. Fools. However, the dramatic entrance was a nice turn of events. A good way to make the populace start to like the heroes that are likely to cause quite a bit damage in their path to saving the world. “Loki, drop the weapon and stand down.” If they knew beyond any doubt that killing Loki would bring back the ones under his control…Natasha isn’t certain that she wouldn’t just shoot him.

 

A child with too much power using people as playthings.

 

A blast of blue comes at the jet and Natasha just maneuvers it out of the line of fire. She watches as the two of them fight, making mental notes on how to improve Steve’s fighting ability. Especially when Captain America is on the ground with the scepter tip on his helmet. There were a dozen moves that she knew to get out of that. All she needed…  
  
“The guy’s all over the place.” Natasha comments, not certain which one she was complaining more about. Loki not staying put to be an easy target, or for Steve to have skills to go with his abilities.

 

AC/DC’s “Shoot to Thrill” comes through the speakers and Natasha mentally groans. There’s only one person she knew would go through the safety protocols just to blare some music.

 

“Agent Romanoff, did you miss me?” Tony Stark, aka Iron Man, says through the coms and she doesn’t even bother asking how. His arrogance reminds her a bit of her boys, expect she’s never going to let the billionaire playboy know that.

 

She watches through her screen as Iron Man blasts Loki back to the ground. When he lands, he has a lot of weaponry pointed at the cloaked figure laying back on the ground. At least he takes this threat seriously.

 

“Make your move, Reindeer Games.” Tony gives the nickname with a flourish that would give one of Clint’s mistimed jokes a run for his money. “Good move.” Iron Man tells Loki when the man puts up his hands in surrender. The armor disappears, but years of training have taught that even a naked person wasn’t defenseless.

 

The Black Widow would know that better than most.

 

“Mr. Stark.”

 

“Captain.”

 

Thunder comes from somewhere, but no storm is in sight. The two men outside lead their captive into the quinjet to be tied up and cuffed to his seat. Loki appears defeated, except for the way he looks at the captors. He knows something that he isn’t saying.

 

“Said anything?” Fury asks her over the headset.

 

Since he was taken on the quinjet? “Not a word.” Romanoff supplies the answer, but still cautious of the god/man restrained in the back. This was just a bit too easy.

 

James would have accepted it, except with a similar wariness as she was looking at the captive. Maybe Loki just wasn’t as much of a threat and had been getting off with lucky hits.

 

At least, that’s what they would tell themselves before Clint would burst out laughing; telling them that’s what everyone else thinks before The Widow strikes, The Ghost claims, and/or The Hawk shoots. Something else was going on, they just didn’t have enough information, yet, to know what.

 

“Just get him here.” Fury tells her. Reading his voice, she knows that he’s just as worried as she is. Maybe for different reasons. “We’re low on time.”

 

To Director Fury it was just about what could happen. For Natasha Romanoff, it was personal.

 

Hydra took one of her boys. Before even getting the chance to get him back, some alien being came from the sky to take another. No. No more.

 

She knew who had control of Clint, and so she’ll get him back first. Afterwards? Afterwards she is going to get James back. There was no other option.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long wait. There was going to be an extra part to this chapter, but I decided against it just now. I didn't like how it was sounding.
> 
> Hope you readers enjoy this. Especially after waiting so long for it. :)


	14. Chapter 14

**Archer:**

As long as Loki has the distraction down pat, it won’t be a problem to put in the next step in the plan. Multiple steps, multiple outcomes, multiple things that could go wrong.

 

At least, everything will go to plan, if Loki doesn’t give anything away. They have the materials that they need to open the portal. Now they just have to take out the main threat.

 

The world’s leaders will take months before they’ll be able to come up with a response team to the attack, but then it’ll be too late.

 

SHIELD? They already have a force in place. Mostly. A few key members still hadn’t been brought in, yet, but Agent Coulson was already working towards making it a reality. A very big threat, especially with SHIELD already in play.

 

 

 

**Captain Steve Rogers:**

Just something about the way they got him just doesn’t sit right with Steve. It was too easy, if such a thing could be possible. “I don’t like it.” He finally voices his complaint to the billionaire that was a lot different than how Steve remembered his father being.

 

“What?” Tony snarked, a stark difference from the man that fathered him. “Rock of Ages giving up so easily?” Which made about zero sense…what does a rock have to do with anything?

 

“I don’t remember if being ever that easy.” Steve whispered, careful to keep his voice down so that Loki couldn’t hear them. “This guy packs a wallop.”

 

Tony smirks, which seems to be a common thing for the older looking man to do. “Still, you are pretty spry, for an older fellow.” Again with the jokes…was nothing serious to this man? “What’s your thing? Pilates?”

 

Pilates? What in the world was that? A plate? Food?

 

“What?” Steve just outright asks the arrogant man. He was making about as much sense as this whole mission actually being what it was appearing.

 

This was too easy.

 

“It’s like calisthenics.” Tony keeps talking about the pie-light-teas, or whatever. “You might have missed a couple things, you know, doing time as a Capscicle.”

 

Crashing his plane into the arctic wasn’t the best thought out plans. Though it did get the weapon out of enemy hands long enough for them to win the war.

 

Well, at least the history books said they won the war. Looking around, Steve isn’t entirely sure that’s what they did.

 

Following that line of thought, Steve goes around to another thing that doesn’t seem to add up. “Fury didn’t tell me he was calling you in.” The Director told him about bringing in The Black Widow, but Iron Man swooping in had been a surprise, especially after the report they had him read on the man.

 

Iron Man was a go. Tony Stark? Not so much.

 

Natasha hadn’t been lying in her report about the man.

 

“Yeah, there’s a lot of things Fury doesn’t tell you.” Tony tells him, and something tells Steve that there’s more to that than just about calling in Tony Stark. The future was a lot different, but human nature hadn’t changed.

 

The jet suddenly shakes violently as a bolt of lightning goes right next to it. Thunder quickly follows the flash of light. When did they fly into a storm? Especially one of this magnitude?

 

“Where’s this coming from?” Natasha asks the group, sounding more annoyed than scared at this point. Steve hasn’t been around the agent long enough to really be able to tell much from just a voice, but she sounded a bit tense.

 

Steve glances over at the prisoner and notices that Loki is staring out the window. He knows something that the rest of them don’t. “What’s the matter?” He goes ahead and asks, pretty certain that Loki won’t tell him. He’s seen enough wannabe war lords to have an idea that they won’t talk for a while. “Scared of a little lightning?”

 

Loki keeps staring at the window, as though waiting something not exactly pleasant to occur. “I’m not overly fond of what follows.”

 

Light, like that from a lightning strike hits the jet. A large blonde man opens the ramp and grabs Loki by the throat where he is handcuffed at and flies out into sky. Steve looks over at Iron Man, wondering if this was something that he knew more about.

 

Seventy years in the ice means that maybe, just maybe, this had become somewhat of a common sight.

 

Tony Stark putting the Iron Man helmet back on is all the answer Steve needs to know that things are going to get messy.

 

Yeah, it was too easy.

 

 

 

**Asset:**

“John…Why did they go through all of this trouble to get It back to not use It?” The man from earlier spoke, unknowing that the being inside the ice could still hear everything. The Asset may not understand what was going on, but It’s mind was able to process more than this generation could know.

 

Quite a bit of knowledge was lost with each passing Handler. Each of them had wanted something kept under wraps to better control the Frozen Beast. What they failed to pass on was knowledge that could have kept better control.

 

Knowledge that would have made them realize how the freezing process worked, and how the machine wiped memories.

 

“I told you, it’s Ivan. Ugh.” Ivan, John, whatever told his partner. Remembering the names wasn’t important to The Asset, but the knowledge that they gave him. “Back up plans. Plans within plans. Wow, now I sound like one of those crazy villains on TV.”

 

_“Dude, seriously? Even I know having an exit plan is important for a mission. Jeez.” A man, one of the men with blonde hair, snarks out from where he’s lying on a white sheet._

_“Usually an exit strategy involves not getting shot, Hawkeye.” A bland man in a bland suit comments, but doesn’t look up from where he is reading on a tablet. “James?”_

_“I concord.” The Asset answers, and feels an emotion unlike the blankness that he now feels as the man on the bed huffs._

_“You guys suck.” The man starts to cross his arms, but flinches from the wound on his wrapped side. “Tasha would totally be on my side, not like you two.” The Asset takes note of how the man isn’t being serious, and how the warm feeling stays._

“Have you ever thought that we might be on the losing side?” The other man outside the frozen prison muses, and a part of The Asset long forgotten tenses up. That was the wrong thing to say if you didn’t wish to be shot.

 

“Psh, we’re Hydra.” Ivan/John dismisses the other man. “Cut off one head, more grow. There’s no way we can lose.”

 

James. The Asset thinks to himself. My name was James at some point.

 

 

 

**Agent Romanoff:**

A large blonde giant ripping open the ramp has Natasha turn in shock. Not fear. Never fear. This was merely an unexpected detour to the plan. That’s all.

 

“Now there’s that guy.” Tony voices out, finally getting over the shock himself. He’s already put his helmet back on and ready to go back flying.

 

Losing the target would be a major loop for the plan to getting everything back under control. Just capturing Loki and then losing him? Really not good for her track record.

 

“Another Asgardian?” Natasha asks, mentally cursing at this change of events but coming up with another plan. Clint had been the one…

 

Maybe that was why he was taken? Because he had been the one to actually see the first invasion of the aliens? That he had fought against Loki the first time?

 

“Think the guy’s a friendly?” Captain America asked, and Natasha flipped through the possibilities. Most likely not a friendly, if he was helping the target to escape.

 

“Doesn’t matter.” Tony tells the captain, and Natasha mentally couldn’t agree more. “If he frees Loki or kills him, the Tesseract’s lost.”

_And Clint._ Natasha mentally adds the other variable, even if the other two wouldn’t care. They saw Agent Clint Barton as just that, an agent. They didn’t see him as she did.

 

Clint and James always come first, even if a mission says otherwise.

 

Tony turns to jump out of the plane, and Natasha cocks an eyebrow at that. Maybe there might be more to Anthony Stark, considering that Clint would be doing the same thing.

 

“Stark, we need a plan of attack!” Captain America, Steve, called to Tony.

 

Fond memories. Steve was sounding a lot like Phil right then.

 

“I have a plan.” Tony tells the icon, and Natasha holds in a snort. That sounded way to familiar to some of her missions with her boys. Of course they have a plan. “Attack.” Before proceeding to jump out the jet.

 

Yeah, Tony and Clint would definitely get along. If…if she ever gets him back.

 

“I’d sit this one out, Cap.” She tells the man who was already putting on a parachute to follow Iron Man out into the sky. She personally knows how impossible it was to rein in someone who always thought that luck would be on their side, or not care if they lived or not. “These guys come from legends, they’re basically gods.”

 

There might be something to her and her boys having suicidal tendencies. She was going to lean with believe in own abilities and in the others to help them out in case something went wrong.

 

“There’s only one God, ma’am.” Steve tells her, but she’s not completely listening. She was stuck on how, this time, something did go wrong and it was her job to get them back. “And I’m pretty sure he doesn’t dress like that.” Then he jumps out, the theatric fool.

 

Even if she didn’t agree with their methods, she needed to get Loki back if there was to be any chance of her getting Clint back.

 

First Clint, then James.

 

Natasha has to believe in that. She has to believe that she’ll get them back. If…if the impossible does occur, who else will?

 

 

 

**Captain America:**

It takes Steve a few more moments to get to where the other two are fighting. A distance off he sees flashes of light and starts to run to his, well, teammate’s help. He doesn’t know who that was that grabbed the prisoner, or what it was either, but he does know that they need to get Loki back.

 

They need Loki to get back the Cube.

 

He finally gets to where the two are fighting to see the blonde giant get ready to pounce on Howard’s son. Thinking quickly, Steve slings his shield so that it ricochets off the other blonde and Iron Man. “Hey!” He yells at the both of them. “That’s enough!” Singularly, he looks at the blonde that grabbed Loki before taking off. “Now, I don’t know what you plan on doing here…”

 

“I’ve come here to put an end to Loki’s schemes!” The blonde yells out his answer, more like bellows to make sure that he is heard.

 

At least that’s how Steve is seeing it. The other man was used to being heard, and wanted to make sure that no one could ignore him now.

 

“Then prove it!” Steve tells him, thinking through the available options of disarming a potential foe. For all that the man with lightning claimed to be on their side in helping them with Loki, there was no proof for it. He could easily be just another wild card wanting power. “Put the hammer down.”

 

“Um, yeah, no!” Iron Man calls out, but Steve doesn’t back down from where he can see the hammer holding man getting even more on edge. “Bad call! He loves his hammer!” Iron Man is backhanded with the giant hammer.

 

Steve warily watches as the man seems to pull in his bluster and looks at him. “You want me to put the hammer down?” As the hammer wielder flied up into the sky, Steve has just enough time to raise his shield up for it to hit down.

 

He had been hoping that the shield would hold up, and it does, even if it flings him back to land beside Iron Man on the ground. He keeps his tone light as he keeps his eyes on the new comer. Never back down from a bully. “Are we done here?”

 

Steve gets up, and Tony stands beside him. It’s a simple question, but if this new person is to be on their side, they’ll have to put their differences aside for at least a time.


	15. Chapter 15

**Archer:**

Finally. It took SHIELD a bit longer than the Archer had anticipated to move Loki into the proper position, but he knows their protocols. A high-profile target like that can only be taken to one place. Maybe not the best plan for SHIELD, considering, but it made following through with the orders a lot easier. The Archer was an inside man that no one thought paid much attention, but saw more than he let on.

 

There was a reason why he was paired up with The Black Widow.

 

Red hair and a deep chuckle try to diverge The Archer from his plan, but it was quickly swallowed up in the blue haze.

 

He knows that he was with the Black Widow and Winter Soldier as more than teammates, but the emotions connecting him to them are gone. He sees their faces, but doesn’t get a rush of feelings that would distract him from the goal.

 

_James. Natasha._

 

He shakes his head before looking out over the group spread out in front of him. An army made up of the worst of the worst. These were the people that would do anything, follow anyone, to finally be rid of SHIELD. Even if it was just to give them a different enemy to deal with.

 

**Natasha Romanoff:**

“The mindless beast, makes play he’s still a man.” Loki tells Director Fury as though playing a game. “How desperate are you, that you call upon such lost creatures to defend you?”

 

 _Pretty desperate,_ Natasha mentally supplied thinking about the others with her in the observation room. Soldier out of time. Billionaire playboy. A god with an ego to match.

 

Very desperate if these are the only people standing between Earth and the threat that was coming this way at this man’s hand.

 

“How desperate am I?” Fury, the spy of spies, counters but even he doesn’t know this game well enough to completely win. “You threaten _my_ world with war. You steal a force you can’t hope to control.”

 

 _Can anyone really control it?_ Natasha glances at the soldier out of time, and the way that he’s staring through the glass. There was a reason why he crashed his plane into the arctic. There was a reason why Clint got between Fury and Loki.

 

They weighed the scale, and found the path with the least destruction, even if it meant their own.

 

“You talk about peace and you kill cause it’s fun.” Fury goes on, but the wording doesn’t sit right with Natasha. Yes, Loki killed others but it wasn’t like that of a human killing another. “You have made me very desperate. You might not be glad that you did.”

 

Loki tilted his head back and to the side, and Natasha clinically made an assessment that would have made the others at least squirm. Killing 88 people was like a person killing an ant to him. It was a game, enjoyment, to watch the rest wriggle under his feet.

 

“Ooh. It burns you to come so close.” Loki snarks out, and he really does sound like a child. “To have the Tesseract, to have power, unlimited power.” He wasn’t talking to Fury anymore. The wording… “And for what? A warm light for all mankind to share, and then to be reminded what real power is.”

 

It’s a game. A ploy. Loki is buying time, but for what?

 

“Well, you let me know if Real Power wants a magazine or something.” Fury tells the prisoner before walking out.

 

Loki smiles right at the camera, as if knowing exactly where it is at. The smirk…he’s playing a game and wants them to know it.

 

“He really grows on you, doesn’t he?” Banner’s comment brings her main attention back to the room she is in, and away from the still smirking god.

 

“Loki’s gonna drag this out.” Rogers tells them, and Natasha adds another mental note about the man. There might be more there than what the files say. “So, Thor, what’s his play?”

 

_Why is he dragging this out?_

“He has an army called the Chitauri.” Thor starts to explain and a voice that sounds a bit too much like Clint’s cracks a joke at the army’s name. “They’re not of Asgard of any world known. He means to lead them against your people. They will win him the Earth. In return, I suspect, for the Tesseract.”

 

It makes sense, in an ‘I want to take over the world’ way, but doesn’t quite explain why he’s stalling for time. They needed to figure it out, and fast. Clint probably would already know by now and be laughing at her and James’ expense. Or know and think everyone else already knew and was wondering what in the world they were thinking.

 

At least until James decided to stare at him and Natasha just to ask outright what’s wrong with them.

 

“An army?” Rogers goes ahead and asks, and Natasha lets the memories keep playing in the background of her mind. “From outer space?” He sounds shocked, but he really shouldn’t be. He was frozen for seventy years. Are aliens really that far of a reach?

 

Heck, James was born, estimated, sometime in the 1920’s. Natasha herself had been born not long before WWII. Aliens coming from the sky? Nearly as ridiculous as being killed with a Neolithic weapon.

 

“So, he’s building another portal.” Banner goes on, ignoring the fact about aliens and the army coming at them. Smart man, going to the root of the problem. “That’s why he needs Erik Selvig.”

 

Irrational anger unfurls and it takes Natasha a moment to keep herself from stabbing/tazing someone. The scientist. Of course. They always remember the civilian but forget about the guards. She should be used to it by now, but still doesn’t like it. They all have the bad habit of referring back to what people think they are instead of the people that they are. Humans.

 

“Selvig?” Thor asks, and Natasha just watches how he’s going to play this out. She read Barton’s report. ‘Blonde giant’ sure is an apt description for Thor, especially since he’s carrying around a hammer. Well, the actual description had been ‘h b gi, # C’ which she deciphered as ‘hot blonde giant, get number for Coulson’.

 

“He’s an astrophysicist.” Banner explains, and mentally Natasha shakes her head. Wrong tone of voice, Hulk. Thor’s not asking what the scientist is, but as more in shock that he’s in the middle of this mess.

 

“Loki has him under some kind of spell,” Natasha finally tells Thor, warrior to warrior, “along with one of ours.” Banner doesn’t catch her slip, but looks from both Thor and Rogers lets her know they saw and understood.

 

Loki has one of her people. She’s going to get him back, even if the rest of the world was putting him on the back burner.

 

“I want to know why Loki let us take him.” Rogers steers the conversation back on track, and Natasha gives a little nod to him in thanks. “He’s not leading an army from here.”

 

Another reason why her boys need to be brought home. James would be mentally laughing with Clint at how everyone was going around in circles. _Snipers._

 

 

 

**Steve:**

“Loki has him under some kind of spell, along with one of ours.” Natasha told Thor and Steve unconsciously tensed up at that tone. He may not know her very well, but he does know fighters. That was a silent reprimand to the group for getting one of her people.

 

Time to change topics. “I want to know why Loki let us take him.” Steve sees her small nod and relaxes a bit at that. No need to cause even more strife on the team than there already was.

 

“I don’t think we should be focusing on Loki.” Dr. Banner tells them, and while Steve acknowledges that there may be some truth to what he has to say, the only lead they have IS Loki. “That guy’s brain is a bag full of cats, you can smell the crazy.”

 

That has Steve switch directions. Another sore point that could easily cause another fight to break out. He feels like he’s babysitting a group of children at this point. Each child prone to poking and bringing out the worst in the others at the least opportune time.

 

Man, does he miss Bucky. As the oldest of four, he knew some tricks on getting them to at least move in the same direction. These people, this team, they are a lot different than his Howling Commandos.

 

“Have care how you speak.” Thor tells Banner, and that’s just a fight waiting to break out. “Loki is beyond reason, but he is of Asgard and my brother.” Defensive of the enemy…another bag of grenades just waiting to go off.

 

“He killed eighty people in two days.” Agent Romanoff’s casual tone as she says the words bellies the raised eyebrows she’s giving Thor. She does have a point, even if right now may not be the time for it.

 

Thor just smiles, similar to how Steve remembers Bucky when he was trying to explain to his mom how he got into yet another fight. “He’s adopted.”

 

Very similar to Bucky explaining Steve sometimes.

 

_“Yea, see mum, Steve…I couldn’t leave him alone.” Bucky would tell his mom with the most innocent and beguiling smile that he had. Just another reason for explaining away getting into yet another fight because Steve just couldn’t turn and looking the other way._

Steve looks at these people and sees that they could become something, just like he saw Bucky’s team all those years ago and saw what they could do. Another time. Another place. Another common enemy. Steve misses his team. He misses Peggy. Misses his mom. He even misses Howard.

 

Mostly, he misses his ‘brother’. He had hoped that, even if he had to enter the ice, he’d at least get to see him again.

 

**The Winter Soldier:**

“They captured Loki.”

 

“Plan still in motion?”

 

“Chitauri.”

 

“Portal…Iridium...”

 

“Alien army.”

 

“Is it sad that I want SHIELD to win this time?” The man whose name James has yet to catch, speaks over the cacophony of other voices.

 

  1. _A TV is playing._



“Shut up, you idiot.” John/Ivan hisses out before, James infers based on the sound, slapping the other man. “Want the Boss to hear you? We want SHIELD wiped out.”

 

Shuffling and beeping. “Aren’t we SHIELD?” The man really bordering on being shot spoke again. “I mean, I know we’re Hydra, but isn’t SHIELD Hydra?”

 

“Mostly.” John/Ivan flings something metallic across the floor. The scrapping couldn’t be from anything else. “Well, only in a few levels. Fury getting the director position really messed with things, but it wasn’t unexpected. The real hammer had been when he made that special task force.”

 

“Strike?”

 

“No, idiot.” Ivan pauses for a second, drinking from a container. “Rumlow is one of us. Most of Strike is.” Crunching. Food, most likely.

 

Rumlow…Strike…

 

The names mean something to James, but nothing to The Asset. Betrayal.

 

“Then who?” Man 2, as James decides that mentally labelling him ‘man-whose-name-I-haven’t-caught-yet’ was getting tiresome.

 

“Strike Team Delta, handled by a Phil Coulson according to sources.” Ivan snorts out what sounds like a laugh. “Can you believe it? A team made up of a woman, a carnie, Icepop in there, and a suit? Being trusted more than Strike, made up of the twenty most elite fighters across the board? Insane, but what happened.”

 

One pop. A gun with a silencer on just took out one of the two that had been out there. James would be upset, but James was just a dream. The Asset was enjoying the quiet.

 

A door opens and another person files in based on the boot steps. “Thank you, Tomas.” The new person speaks, and now there’s a name to Man 2.

 

“No, thank you, sir, for trusting me with this assignment for Hydra.” Tomas answers, but instead of sounding nasally like he had before, he sounded confident and fluent. A game.

 

“Clean up the mess.” The new person orders, voice finally clicking with a name. Sounds of scuffling and movement follow after the order, but no more voices until after the door shuts. Tapping on the glass keeps The Assets brain focused still on the outside world. “Funny, isn’t it?” The voice speaks again, sounding as if he is talking into the glass. “I catch one of Fury’s pets, and another is taken by aliens.”

 

_Rumlow. Brock Rumlow. Traitor._

 

The one that dragged The Asset back to the ice. The Asset adds this name to his list of people that he’s going to eliminate as soon as he thaws.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I cut out a few scenes that I had planned, but I like this one a bit better. Enjoy, fine readers.
> 
> I have the layout of the next chapter on my computer. Which, if you watched the movie, it really really close to it. Changing cannon without completely changing cannon. Loads of fun. :)


	16. Chapter 16

**Captain Rogers:**

A little voice in the back of Steve’s mind keeps telling him to look more into what they were saying. Something was going on beneath the surface, he just didn’t have enough information, yet.

 

The agents on board mostly just left him alone in his wanderings, though something told him that there were eyes on him no matter what room he entered. Kind of creepy, but not unexpected for a place of spies.

 

Eventually he catches himself wandering back to where two of his other teammates had decided to hole up in. Agent Romanoff – Natasha, had already been pulled for a different meeting. It had to be something about the prisoner, but Steve didn’t want to think too much into that right now.

 

“Well, I promise a stress free environment. No tension. No surprises.” Steve hears Tony say to someone, most likely Bruce, right before the person yells out in surprise. “Nothing?”

 

Children. They’re worse than the Howling Commandos even were when on leave. “Is everything a joke to you?” Startling Banner into unleashing Hulk...yeah. Bad idea, especially in a flying tin can.

 

Tony doesn’t even look repentant. “Funny things are.” The arrogant man tells him, a perfect reminder that this man is nothing like Howard.

 

Howard knew when it was time to be cautious. When to not play with fire. This man in front of him? Nothing about caring for others. Tony Stark is just a boy playing at being a hero, not knowing what it means.

 

“Threatening the safety of everyone on this ship isn’t funny.” Steve reprimanded the playboy, before turning to Bruce, who couldn’t help that he was a ticking time bomb. “No offense, doctor.”

 

“No, it’s alright.” Doctor Banner waves off the comment. “I wouldn’t have come aboard if I couldn’t handle pointy things.”

 

At least someone has more belief in their self-control that what Howard’s son would like. How could someone turn out so different than their parents?

 

“You’re tiptoeing, big man.” Tony starts talking, and Steve is getting close to the end of his patience with this man. “You need to strut.”

 

Arrogant.

 

Controlling his annoyance, Steve tries to keep Tony from deciding ‘I wanna see big green’ and poking Bruce some more. “And you need to focus on the problem, Mr. Stark.” Even if calling him the same words he called Howard twisted his insides a bit. Tony wasn’t Howard. This wasn’t his world anymore.

 

“You think I’m not?” Tony snarks back, coming back to verbally step on Steve’s toes. “Why did Fury call us and why now?” Steve tried to ignore the question, but it lined up just a bit too much like the cautious voice in the back of his mind kept whispering. “Why not before? What isn’t he telling us? I can’t do the equation unless I have all the variables.”

 

Or put together a puzzle without all of the pieces. “You think Fury’s hiding something?” No way was he going to let Stark think that their minds might be on the same plane on this. Not going to happen. Steve is a soldier first and foremost. Soldiers follow orders.

 

Mostly.

 

“He’s a spy.” Stark answers as if the answer should be obvious to everyone and not just to himself. “Captain, he’s _THE_ spy. His secrets have secrets.” As though giving directions in a play, Stark points to Banner, bringing the doctor into the spotlight. “It’s bugging him too, isn’t it?”

 

“Uh…I just want to finish my work here and…just…” Doctor Banner barely speaks, and the words don’t completely flow, but the picture that was started to be painted had a few more shadows than Steve would like.

 

He can brush off his paranoia from just waking up from one war time to be thrown into another.

 

He can disregard Stark because…well, the man is Tony Stark.

 

But Doctor Banner?

 

“Doctor?” Steve prods, wanting the input from the usually silent man. Maybe he saw something that the rest of them had overlooked.

 

“’A warm light for all mankind.’” Doctor Banner quotes as though bringing together pieces of thought into some manner to explain to the rest of them. “Loki’s jab about the Cube to Fury. I think that was meant for Tony.” Banner nods to the other scientist. “Stark Tower.”

 

“The big ugly building in New York?” Steve asks, verifying even as Tony glares at him and Banner nods. “What about it?”

 

“It’s powered by Stark Reactors, a self-sustaining energy source.” Banner goes onto explain, mostly for Steve’s benefit. “It should run itself for…What?” The doctor asks Tony. “A year?”

 

Very impressive invention, but doesn’t quite hit on whatever was twisting around about this plan. Something else…

 

“That’s just the prototype.” Stark keeps talking, but the puzzle pieces still aren’t fitting together. “I’m kind of the only name in clean energy right now.”

 

“So, why didn’t SHIELD bring him in on the Tesseract project?” Banner asks, the same question that just now popped into Steve’s mind. Clean energy. Energy. Power. “I mean, what are they doing in the energy business in the first place.”

 

They’re not.

 

SHIELD is a spy agency. Their business is information, and the allocation of them to the right people.

 

“I should probably look into that once my decryption programmer finishes breaking into all of SHIELD’s secure files.” Stark snarks out, and that wasn’t what Steve expected to hear.

 

Decryption programmer? Secure files? “I’m sorry, did you say…?” He asked, just to verify what the arrogant genius just spouted out.

 

Some information was secret for a reason.

 

“Jarvis has been running it since I hit the bridge.” Stark explains, as if that was any explanation at all. The only Jarvis Steve knows used to be a butler, and had probably passed away a while ago. Most of the people he knew were gone. “In a few hours we’ll know every dirty secret SHIELD has ever tried to hide.” Suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, Stark holds up a bag of blueberries. “Blueberry?”

 

A very bad distraction method that Steve would have done as a child. Mostly so that his mother would stop asking about the bruises he got. Even after Bucky started giving him a hand.

 

He didn’t like bullies. Still doesn’t. Maybe why Stark hacking into SHIELD doesn’t bother him nearly as much as it sounds like it should. “Yet you’re confused about why they didn’t want you around?” A nosy child can cause a lot of problems.  


Bucky…no. Tony didn’t have a Bucky in his corner like Steve used to.

 

“An intelligence organization that fears intelligence?” Stark gives the words with a snap. “Historically, not possible.”

 

Two steps ahead. Trickster God. “I think Loki’s trying to wind us up.” Even if that won’t stop him from doing his own looking around. “This is a man who means to start a war, and if we don’t stay focused, he’ll succeed.” A divided land is easily conquered. “We have orders, we should follow them.” Even if he’s never been one to follow when the need arose.

 

“Following’s not really my style.” Stark answers, automatically verbally hitting Steve yet again.

 

He was doing the guy a favor, not running to tell Fury and Coulson what was going on. “And you’re all about style, aren’t you?” Two can play at this game.

 

“Of the people in this room, which one is; A. wearing a spangly outfit, and B. not of use?” Stark smarts back, and Steve knows the verbal hit hit its mark.

 

“Steve, tell me none of this smells a little funky to you?” Banner asks, trying to get between the two larger than life personalities.

 

Yes, it does seem odd. However, as military man, he knows the equal importance of following orders. “Just find the cube.”

 

He walks away and he knows that’s not what they want. However, he needs more information before jumping out of the plane, so to speak. It wasn’t lining up, but sometimes that was because there was a detour the soldiers didn’t know about.

 

Though sometimes it was simple as the higher ups were doing something that they didn’t want the people on the ground to know.

 

Like leaving Bucky and the Howling Commandos in a prison camp. Acceptable loss to them, not acceptable to Steve.

 

 

 

**James:**

Brock Rumlow. Strike team. Elite form of fighters put together for cases that the rest of the world liked to pretend didn’t exist. They were an elite precision team and operated similarly to that of a scalpel. Sometimes the world need a laser; a single point of destruction designed to go to the root of the problem.

 

 _“Strike Team Delta.”_ _The man in the bland suit told them from where he sat behind a desk. “It seems like the only way for you three to keep a handler.”_

_“You taking us all on, sir?” The blonde with messy hair asks, barely keeping still. It always was shocking to see him outside of a job. The other man could be just as still and silent as the rest of them, but could barely stay still for a moment whenever he didn’t need to. “Though I think the name needs some work. Sounds like a college frat.”_

_“You complain too much, yastreb.” A woman’s voice, but no matter how much James tries to bring her to mind her face fades back into the darkness._

_“And you three keep scaring off handlers.” The man in the suit tells them all in that same inflectionless voice. Only, James knows that there is a slight twinkling behind the exasperation. The affection the suit felt toward the blonde had eventually started to expand to them._

_Even if James can’t quite remember who the other part of ‘them’ was._

_“We’re not that scary.” James remembers telling them with a shrug, thinking that the handlers they kept assigning to him should be better at their jobs._

_The suit raised an eyebrow at that. “You told Martin that the next time he looks at…then you are going to, and I’m quoting here, ‘leave a tattoo made of bullets’ on him? Then Barton drugs Jameson and leaves him in a human sized nest on top of a building?” Suddenly the suit is looking at someone to the side of James that he can’t make out. “And you. You wrapped Quinn up in webbing and dropped him off in the cafeteria!”_

_“Just a joke.” The woman answers as innocently as someone could. Just on her tone, James would have thought she was innocent if she had been anyone else._

_“Too bad most handlers don’t have a sense of humor, boss.” The blonde smirked to suit._

_“A little threat never hurt anyone.” James added to his two partners._

His two partners. Why can’t he remember the other one?

 

Another thing that he’s going to make them pay for whenever he’s finally free. The Winter Soldier doesn’t take kindly to those that take away it’s memories. James just has to break the programming again.

 

That’ll be fun.

  

**Black Widow:**

There are many different types of people that she could be all at once. She had to learn to fit into any role needed for a job, even if some churned her stomach. The role her boys asked her to be was always the hardest to play. They always asked her to be herself.

 

“There’s not many people that can sneak up on me.” Loki turns around in his cage to look at where she had been standing for the past few moments.

 

The best lie is truth. The easiest way to trick the trickster would be to give him a truth. A truth, for isn’t everything subjective?

 

“But you figured I’d come.” Natasha told him, and it had been a carefully laid plan. Multiple plans led to her being the one to interrogate the man/god in front of her. The timing had been her choice.

 

“After.” Loki tells her, and she knows that this path was the right one. The play in the game was the right call to make. “After whatever tortures Fury can concoct, you would appear as a friend, as a balm. And I would cooperate.” He wasn’t wrong, because that is the usual play.

 

Usual, but not the only one. “I wanna know what you’ve done to Agent Barton.” Every word is chosen carefully to give the view that she wants Loki to see.

 

James would have seen the play. Clint would have cocked an eyebrow before shrugging. No matter how much Loki knew from reading minds, he would never be able to completely know her. How can you know someone who could be anyone?

 

“I’d say I’ve expanded his mind.” Loki tells her with a smirk, and for a moment the anger surges up and she automatically controls it.

 

Before letting it come back. Truth. “And once you’ve won. Once you’re kind of the mountain. What happens to his mind?” Fear. Real fear that she would never let anyone see leaks into her voice, but only because she wants it to. Because she needs it to.

 

He has to believe that she’s only here for Clint.

 

“Is this love, Agent Romanoff?” Loki asks, and to most people how she feels would be defined as love. Except…love is such a small word to describe what the three of them were/are to one another.

 

“Love is for children.” She spouts out the phrase without a second thought. Love is…Children feel love. What she feels is more than what love can ever hope to describe. “I owe him a debt.” A lifetime full of debts, where one will never be able to fully repay the other.

 

“Tell me.” He says, but what he means is ‘spill your secrets’. He wants to know how much she’d give, and she knows Clint more than Loki. She knows what his mind would have given him.

 

Insecurity. Give him what he thinks he knows is truth. Barton’s deepest fear. “Before I worked for SHIELD, I, well, I made a name for myself.” His fear that he’s only there because of some twisted form of gratitude. “I have a very specific skillset.” That as soon as the bill is paid, they’ll push him out. “I didn’t care who I used it for, or on. I got on SHIELD’s radar in a bad way.” Truth, even if not the complete form of it. “Agent Barton was sent to kill me, he made a different call.” And gained two twisted Russian assassins.

 

“And what will you do if I vow to spare him?” Bargaining? Really? Now that card wasn’t worth playing with the two tricksters at this table. Even if it was to be expected.

 

She gently smiles at him, as if at a child who should know better. “Not let you out.” The expected answer for an expected question.

 

Loki laughs, another step in the right direction. “Ah, no. But I like this.” Of course you do, arrogant child. “Your world in the balance, and you bargain for one man?”

 

Without James and Clint…there is no world for Natasha. “Regimes fall every day.” Which was more truth than she would have liked. “I tend not to weep over that, I’m Russian…or was.” A calculated reveal of what was, and what shaped.

 

“What do you want?” Loki’s turn to move around the pieces, and he was moving into place. Just a few more plays and he’ll be tying the rope himself. Soon he’ll be in the right place.

 

The compromised assassins. Which is more what she is that she would like. “It’s really not that complicated.” Agent Romanoff, sometime lover of Agent Barton, twists the words around. “I’ve got red in my ledger, I’d like to wipe it out.” She kept into the mask, one part of her that her new world saw, into place. This is the person that he’d expect to come in here. With a bit of Natasha poking her way through.

 

“Can you?” Loki starts with a question. “Can you wipe out that much red?” Offensive. “Drakov’s daughter? Sao Paulo? The hospital fire? Barton told me everything.” More like you plucked from his mind, like so many people had done to her and James over their lifetime. “Your ledger is dripping, it’s gushing red, and you think saving a man no more virtuous than yourself will change anything?” The verbal cuts deflect off, having no more bite than anything anyone else has said.

 

If her boys had been the ones to say it…it may have had the power that this person’s tongue doesn’t have. They know what she has done, just as she knows what they have done as well. Still, at the end of the day, the accept one another.

 

“This is the basest sentimentality! This is a child at prayer…Pathetic!” Loki keeps ranting, showing that he’s underestimating his enemies. A fatal mistake that way too many have done before. “You lie and kill in the service of liars and killers.” True, but nothing worth weeping over. “You pretend to be separate, to have your own code, something that makes up for the horrors. But they are a part of you, and they will never go away!”

 

Just becomes something evens out, doesn’t mean that the mark was never there. Scars. Daggers with flowers.

 

Loki suddenly slamming into the cage has her flinch back. That amount of violence wasn’t in the plan, or strength. Loki may not be the only one underestimating their enemy.

 

“I won’t touch Barton.” Unless the move was to make sure she was listening for this part. “Not until I make him kill you. Slowly. Intimately. In every way he knows you fear! And when he’ll wake just long enough to see his good work, and when he screams I’ll split his skull! This is my bargain, you worm!” A threat, but none of the information that she needs.

 

Natasha turns away, horrified that someone could do such a thing. The Black Widow moves around the pieces on the board until the right words form. “You’re a monster.”

 

“No, you brought the monster.” Loki laughs out, as though he was the one to win the game.

 

Even though his words locked the door to his prison.

 

She turns around, the mask falling away so only Black Widow shows through. “So, Banner…that’s your play.”

 

Loki jerks back, as though he’s been struck. Underestimating. “What?” He should have paid more attention to what he plucked from Barton’s mind.

 

“Loki means to unleash the Hulk.” She says into her earpiece. “Keep Banner in the lab, I’m on my way. Send Thor as well.” At this point she looks straight at Loki, letting him know who really won this battle of wits. “Thank you for your cooperation.”

 

Sometimes the Widow likes to play with her prey before striking.

 

 

 

**The Archer:**

He counts down the minutes in the back of his mind. Selvig and the rest of the scientists are doing their part of the plan. They have the tools needed, now they just needed their leader back, and the major threat to the operation destroyed.

 

The Archer started the count down as soon as SHIELD had Loki in custody. Right about now they should have brought in Black Widow to extract information out of the Trickster God. Loki should be…

 

The time reaches zero and he gives the signal.

 

Here comes the show.


	17. Chapter 17

**Captain America:**

Even with everything changing so much, certain things never do. The most prominent at the moment being the need for power. The people of this time were the same as those in the time that he left. They were always looking for another source of power.

 

Another weapon.

 

“You’re supposed to be locating the Tesseract.” Director Fury’s voice echoed just outside of the lab. Perfect. This way Steve can deal with the head of the snake.

 

“We are.” Dr. Banner defends. What was SHIELD hiding that they didn’t want the world to know about? Right. Weapons. Weapons that Steve just found. “The model’s locked and we’re sweeping for the signature now.” He may be a soldier, but there were some things that a lifetime of being don’t go away just because someone strapped him into a uniform. “When we get a hit, we’ll have the location within half a mile.”

 

He agreed to become their project so they’ll let him go and help his country. They put chemicals into him that they didn’t know all of the side effects of. He agreed so that he had a chance to go and help.

 

“And you’ll get your cube back, no muss, no fuss.” Tony waves off Fury’s glare just before the monitor behind the two men changes to multiple files. “What’s Phase 2?”

 

Great question. Too bad for Fury, Steve already has the answer. He drops the assault rifle that he found on the table. “Phase 2: SHIELD uses the cube to make weapons.” Just this time, he was on Tony’s side. “Sorry, the computer was moving a little slow.” He still hadn’t quite got a hand on all of the new technology in this time.

 

And finding physical evidence proves just how far the people had gotten.

 

“Rogers, we gathered everything related to the Tesseract.” Fury explains, but all Steve sees it how the pieces are fitting together into a not so nice picture. Things never change. “This does not mean that we’re…”

 

“Sorry, Nick.” Tony tells them without sounding sorry at all. Maybe just sorry that this is what was going on underneath everything to start with. He turns the computer screen around to show the group the rest of the information he’d found.

 

Weapon plans. Weapons with the base being the Tesseract.

 

People don’t change. “I was wrong, director.” And Steve wishes more than anything that he’d been wrong. He fought in a war that was supposed to be the end of such things. “The world hasn’t changed a bit.” Naïve. They had been naïve to believe that the atrocities of that time would have stopped the world from going down this path.

 

Power.

 

 

 

**James:**

They wiped away the people that meant the world to him. They did it to make him into an even better weapon. He can’t remember the woman, even if he knows that is what she was. Just flashes of memories that don’t quite combine.

 

The other two…he remembers two different blondes. Or maybe three, even if two look the same even if one was a lot taller than the other. It was hard, keeping ahold of memories that had been pushed, prodded, and thrown into the darkest reaches of his mind. It was hard, but what else was he to do while frozen? His body was resting, but right now was when his mind had time to try to fix itself.

 

Try to, because that’s one thing his captors were really good at. They knew how to wipe and brainwash.

 

_Brock Rumlow. Traitor._

 

He had to remember that name. He had to tell…had to tell…

 

James doesn’t remember. But it was important. He couldn’t let them think that the man was still a friend. They needed to know the truth.

 

If only he could remember who ‘they’ was…

 

_“I bet I can make this shot.” The blonde who always had a smile on, even if the smile wasn’t noticeable to the rest of the world, told James with arrogance._

_“No one can.” James remembers telling the man, shaking his head. They would have to move to a different sight to be able to get the angle right._

_“What will you give me if I do?” The archer raised a suggestive eyebrow and James remembers the pull in his stomach. He would give anything that they asked, even if the other man didn’t win the bet._

Were they already dead? Was fighting the mind wipe even worth it? What is life without there being someone out there to fight for?

 

 

 

**Agent Romanoff:**

“Did you know about this?” Dr. Banner asks the question, and Natasha is starting to get a bit concerned for his mental control. Loki’s plan involves the Hulk. The best way to not fall into the plan? Not have the Hulk come out to play.

 

Getting the information was only part of the mission. The next part? Keeping it from coming to fruition. “You want to think about removing yourself from this environment, doctor?” It’s a warning. Maybe not one that she can follow through with, but sometimes you have to make do with what you have.

 

Make them think that you have the bigger gun, even if all you have is a tube of lipstick.

 

“I was in Calcutta,” Dr. Banner answers, and even if she found it somewhat amusing, now wasn’t the time for sarcasm, “I was pretty well removed.”

 

Too bad that they needed his skills to track the cube. Too bad that they were playing right into Loki’s hands. “Loki’s manipulating you.” Knowledge is power, and just maybe…maybe if these people have the knowledge they can stop.

 

Oh, looks like they figured out Fury’s plan. Wonderful. That’s a sure way to divide a group.

 

“And you’ve been doing what exactly?” Dr. Banner attacked with a truth. A truth, because no one can understand the whole. Her life is about manipulation.

 

She is who they need her to be, even when they don’t demand it of her. She really misses her boys right about now. Even if their temperaments would escalate things a bit before going back down. “You didn’t come here because I bat my eyelashes at you.” Even if that had been a possibility.

 

James would already be silently threatening to shoot someone, with Clint smirking every time he happened to glance their way. They would have figure out the complete plan by now.

 

“Yes, and I’m not leaving because suddenly you get a little twitchy.” Dr. Banner counters, and mentally Natasha closes her eyes at how foolish a genius can be. She didn’t care about the weapons. Right now, her main concern was keeping Banner from turning green. “I’d like to know why SHIELD is using the Tesseract to build weapons of mass destruction.”

 

Why would someone take a group of girls to train and experiment on them? Why would someone take a soldier, dope them full of drugs, brainwash their mind, and send him out on the world? Why would someone go recruiting at a circus for a sniper?

 

She cuts a glance over at Steve Rogers. Why would someone create a Super Soldier?

 

“Because of him.” Director Fury answers, and Natasha has a whole list of other answers. Just looking around the room in front of her gives her enough to pause.

 

Wild cards. Power. Control.

 

“Me?” Thor asks the question with a knee jerk response, and did they not see it?

 

“Last year Earth had a visitor from another planet who had a grudge match that leveled a small town.” Director Fury answered their question and passage of time was like a stab to her chest. They’ve had James for a year. “We learned that not only are we not alone, but we are hopelessly, hilariously, outgunned.”

 

A year ago Clint was cracking jokes with them about an alien King Arthur. Now? Now he was under the control of the alien brother, and James was still under someone’s control.

 

“My people want nothing but peace with your planet.” Thor tells them, and it’s just a lifetime of training that keeps Tasha from letting out a snort of laughter. Naïve. Sweet and naïve.

 

Just because one group wants peace, it doesn’t mean that the rest do.

 

“But you’re not the only people out there, are you?” Fury defends his point, and Natasha understands it. If someone is more powerful than you, it means that they can take what you care about from you. “And, you’re not the only threat. The world’s filling up with people who can’t be matched, they can’t be controlled.”

 

In this new world, there were too many wildcards. At the end of the day, her and her boys were still human. Maybe just a bit more, but still human. Or maybe less, but she’ll never think that of her boys. Clint believed in the good in them, and her and James were trying the best way that they could.

 

Even if he claimed that there was nothing to atone for.

 

“Like you controlled the cube?” The Captain tried for an underhanded hit, but failed spectacularly. Natasha knows weaknesses, and the best place to hit to incapacitate.

 

The Director has already played with the scenario enough times to know when there was a flaw. Hindsight is 20/20, even if Fury is lacking an eye.

 

 _Would that make it 10/20?_ The remembered comment from Clint lightens the mood her soul was trapped in, but nothing could break through the rising tensions in the room.

 

“You’re work with the Tesseract is what drew Loki to it, and his allies.” Thor counters and while one part of Natasha goes ‘oops’ with sarcasm (it sounds a lot like James right after he shot that one Trainer in the foot) another part scoffs (Clint, definitely Clint) with a comment about how that isn’t the way the world works. “It is the signal to all the realms that the Earth is ready for a higher form of war.”

 

‘That’s fantasy world, Thor.’ Natasha thinks to the alien, but doesn’t respond. This isn’t her playground. This isn’t her battle. At the end of the day, all she is is an assassin/spy. Is it the right thing? Is it the wrong? She doesn’t know.

 

What she does know is what she’s seen since the 1950’s. You either had the power to play in the game, or someone with a lot more power than you controls you. She’s not a fan of being a pawn, nor watching the people she lov…that are hers be pawns themselves.

 

“A higher form?” Captain America asks, and mentally she scoffs at his naivety. Hadn’t the war he’d been in show how far people were wiling to go to win?

 

There would always be another war. There was another threat.

 

“You forced our hand.” Director Fury defends, and the humor that Natasha has been filling fades a bit. That sounds a bit too much like The Red Room there. “We had to come up with something.”

 

Way too much like Hydra. Specifically, the excuses Hydra and The Red Room would have given if anyone had been bothered to ask. If anyone had bothered to ask why they were freezing a man who didn’t know who he was. If anyone had bothered to ask why did they take twenty girls and train them to be the best assassins/spies the world could imagine.

 

They had to come up with something to counter The Super Soldier. They needed a weapon as close to him as possible, even after the man sank into the sea.

 

“Nuclear deterrent.” Stark snarks with a cruelty to his words that wouldn’t have been there a few months ago. “ ‘Cause that always calms everything right down.”

 

This world wasn’t for everyone. There was a reason why Agent Romanoff approved Iron Man, but didn’t approve Mr. Stark. Tony was getting close to a breaking point.

 

“Remind me again how you made your fortune, Stark?” The director tried to be cutting, but it wasn’t as cutting as it would have been. Stark was roughening around the edges.

 

It was…hard to see that happen. It hurt, just a bit, to see even more of the foolish man from last year become more and more like the weapons in the room.

 

For that is what they’ve become, right?

 

Director Fury is the head of SHIELD. No one gets that far up the chain of command without loosing something. Without loosing a piece of their humanity. He wears the cloak of a leader, but Natasha can see the shadows. She can see when someone sees themselves as just an object, even if it’s a shield instead of a sword.

 

Thor is from another world. In his place, he is a warrior. But what is another form of warrior, but a weapon? He goes into the melee to destroy the enemy. Isn’t that what a weapon is? A tool to be pointed and set loose?

 

“Excuse me, did WE come to YOUR planet and blow stuff up?” Natasha hears the words that they are throwing around, and she should try to calm them down. This was Loki’s plan all along.

 

Divide the protective layer.

 

“Did you always give your champions such mistrust?” Thor sounds as though he truly believes that they are something other than what the world is pointing at them to be.

 

Anthony Stark became a weapon when he refused to die in Afghanistan. He lost a piece of himself over there, with another piece breaking away at his father’s old partner’s betrayal. He’s still a civilian, but quickly loosing the pieces that made him so.

 

No one trained him to become what he did, he chose to without knowing the consequences.

 

Then there’s Bruce Banner…The Hulk. Was there much more to say to that? The doctor wasn’t a weapon, but the being inside of him? The being that armies would kill to get their hands on? At least if they could control it?

 

They are all weapons. The Red Room created her. Hydra created James. SHIELD honed Clint.

 

Captain Steven Rogers? Well, he’s the Super Soldier. What else is that but another weapon?

 

Natasha watches. She observes as tensions rise and then fall back down. She misses her soldier, her hawk. She misses the reminders that she is more than the guns in her holsters, knives in her sheaths, and the Black Widow Bites around her wrists.

**The Hawk:**

Everything is in place. The portal is ready to be opened. The only thing to get is Loki and the scepter. Then…then the world will fall into its rightful place.

 

 

_“Regimes fall every day.” Tasha told them both, rubbing her hands over them to make sure that they really were there. “I don’t…can’t…”_

_“We fall together, moya ballerina.” James told her, and Clint found himself looking at the other man. He nodded, agreeing with the sentiment._

_It doesn’t mean he planned on falling._

 

The pieces of the puzzle were coming together. The enemy will be on guard, but The Hawk knows all of their weaknesses. He knows what play book they will take out and use for such this circumstance was.

 

SHIELD trained him just a bit too well.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long update. I finished up a couple of other works before tackling this guy.
> 
> I have the next three chapters lined up, with the fourth one about half way.
> 
> For anyone still reading, thank you.  
> I still love hearing from readers. And if you find any mistakes? Feel free to point them out. Un-beta'd, so I definitely know I messed up in a few places (I even found a few myself by rereading a piece of it, lol).


	18. Chapter 18

**Captain America:**

This isn’t going to work. The team was still fighting even after a whole night. Team…now that’s something to laugh or cry about it. This wasn’t a team.

 

A team was what he had with Bucky and the Howling Commandoes. They saw what needed to be done, put aside their differences, and did it.

 

“You speak of control, yet you court chaos.” Thor was still going after Fury, and while Steve doesn’t blame him, enough is about enough.

 

Even if he’s already joined in with losing patience. The machine hasn’t found the Tesseract. It was a waiting game to see what Loki would do next.

 

“It’s his M.O., isn’t it?” Dr. Banner joins in, and this is not a good place for him to turn green. “I mean, what are we, a team?” Even if what he’s saying jibes with what everyone else must be thinking. “No, no, no. We’re a chemical mixture that makes chaos. We’re…we’re a time bomb.”

 

This team is a waiting disaster. At any moment someone is going to say the wrong word to start the others in ripping into someone else.

 

“You need to step away.” Director Fury…a little too late. This was your mess, and trying to keep it under some kind of control isn’t helping.

 

Yeah, Steve was starting to miss the obliviousness of the ice.

 

Mr. Stark, Tony, puts his arm around Steve and he tenses up. “Why shouldn’t the guy left off a little steam?” Everything was a joke to him!

 

This was serious. This was world ending… “You know why!” Steve snaps, loosing the calm that he’d been trying to maintain. Time bomb may be an apt description for what they were. “Back off!”

 

Tony turns so that he’s now facing Steve instead of standing to the side. What is with this man and wanting to push every button that Steve had? “Oh, I’m starting to want you to make me.” He hadn’t been this angry with someone since… Since…ever.

 

“Big man in a suit of armor.” Steve couldn’t fight with fists against his ‘teammate’, but a lifetime of being smaller than the bullies taught him another way to fight back. Words. “Take that off, what are you?”

 

Tony smirks, but Steve sees that the hit landed. “Genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist.”

 

“I know guys with none of that worth ten of you.” Steve sees their faces in his mind, but doesn’t voice any of their names. He knows who they were, even if no one else cared to remember. “Yeah, I’ve seen the footage.” He verbally attacks again. The internet is a wonderful thing, especially when wanting to learn more about potential teammates.

 

“Now, now, old man.” Tony gave as good as Steve was sending his way. “Didn’t anyone tell you? The internet is filled with all kinds fake things. Not everything you see is true.”

 

“The only thing you really fight for is yourself.” Steve had found the weak spot, and was going to twist just as much as Tony tries to twist into his own. “You’re not the guy to make the sacrifice play,” not like himself or his team, “to lay down on the wire and let the other guy crawl over you.”

 

“I think I could just cut the wire.” Tony, Howard Stark’s son, always had an answer to stop himself from being the sacrifice. Always a way out.

 

Sometimes, there was no way out. “Always a way out…” Steve says, more to himself than to the man in front of him that looks too much like a Stark to be anything else, but acts nothing like his parents. “You know, you may not be a threat, but you better stop pretending to be a hero.”

 

Heroes put their lives on the line…and know that someday they might fall. They just know that the sacrifice was worth it.

 

“A hero? Like you?” Tony snaps out, and Steve knows he finally hit the spot to make the flying man lash out. “You’re a lab rat, Rogers.” Now that…it wasn’t…That… “Everything special about you came out of a bottle!”

 

You want to play, Stark? Fine. Then they’ll play.

**Agent Romanoff:**

“A hero? Like you? You’re a lab rat, Rogers. Everything special about you came out of a bottle!” Stark said the words to Steve, but Natasha could feel the bite in them herself.

 

The Red Room created her. They pumped her full of chemicals to change what she was. She became sturdier, and long lived. She was quite a bit older than what SHIELD files claimed. James was even older.

 

“Put on the suit, let’s go a few rounds.” Steve puffs up, and Natasha rolls her eyes at the foolishness of men. Her two would have given them a run for the money in the arrogance/confidence game, but they both knew when to put aside the squabbling.

 

Unprofessional, the lot of them.

 

“You people are so petty…and tiny.” Thor announces as if he knows all.

 

Which he definitely doesn’t. If he was half the person that he thought he was, he would have noticed Loki going off the reservation. He would have noticed his brother, even if he was adopted, was playing for a side that wanted to destroy the planet he was coming to adopt as his own.

 

If only…

 

“Yeah, this is a tee…” Dr. Banner mumbles, and all of her anger that was starting to be pointed at Thor quickly dissipated so her attention could focus on her primary goal.

 

She brought Dr. Banner in, it was her job to control him. Any means necessary.

 

“Agent Romanoff, would you escort Dr. Banner back to his…” Director Fury was giving an order, even if it wasn’t worded as such. She knew orders. She knew control.

 

“Where?” Dr. Banner, his emotional state deteriorating quickly. They can NOT have the Hulk loose on board here. “You rented my room.”

 

Disaster. While she jokes that her and James were courting disaster by being with Clint, she doesn’t have a death wish.

 

“You want to know my secret, Agent Romanoff?” Dr. Banner asks, his tone hitting all kinds of warning signals inside her mind. “You want to know how I stay calm?”

 

Her hand moves to the gun at her waist. While it may not work on stopping the Hulk, it was the closest defense that they had. She knew that calmness. She heard it enough times right before her or one of her team decided to quit the nice guy act.

 

Agent Phil Coulson was much more than a man in a suit. James and Clint, while both archers, weren’t slouches when it came to hand-to-hand.

 

“Dr. Banner…” Steve joins in the show down, and Natasha is grateful to have someone to have her back in this play. At least, someone else besides Fury. She trusts the man, even if she shouldn’t. “Put down the scepter.”

 

They definitely can’t afford a Loki-controlled Hulk. Having a Hawkeye controlled by him was bad enough. The Hulk? Mass destruction.

 

Though…No.

 

Banner looks down, and seems to be shocked that he’s even holding the thing. Could it be that the scepter plays on strong emotions? Makes them stronger?

 

It would explain how everyone keeps going for each other’s throats.

 

**Beep.**

 

“Got it.” Tony randomly says from where he glued himself to the screen. “I can get there fastest.” Tony moves as though to go, and Steve holds up a hand. Thor one step behind him.

 

This was a weapon from Thor’s world. “The Tesseract belongs on Asgard, no human is a match for it.” Which is why she’ll excuse that tone.

 

Was any of them here truly human at this point?

 

Steve? “You’re not going alone!” This was his team, so there was a type of responsibility to it. Or maybe a deep sense of guilt?

 

She may have to look a bit more into Captain America’s past before the ice incident. Especially if they all survive this. After she gets Clint back from Loki, and James back from…well, suspected Hydra.

 

How that multiheaded snake was still alive was anybody’s guess, but that’s where her information was kind of leading her to. Or at least a group of people trying to recreate it.

 

“You gonna stop me?” Tony starts the power play, and mentally Natasha winces at memories of them trying to keep Clint out of the fighting. Or at least further in the background. He looked to be the oldest of them, but still the youngest in both years and experience. They had wanted to keep his innocence intact.

 

“Put on the suit, let’s find out.” Steve sounds a bit too much like a louder James for her to not feel the pang. Now isn’t the time for memories.

 

“Oh, my God!” Banner yelling out was exactly the distraction they needed…

 

**The Asset:**

Voices bring him away from memories of dancers on a stage. Footsteps announce the arrival of more people. What more did they want? He hasn’t been in the ice that long. Usually it’s a lot longer between thaws.

 

Even if he doesn’t completely remember being thawed out last time, some part of him knows that it’s too soon.

 

“Asset?” The man from earlier, Brock Rumlow, knocks onto the glace. If his body was animated, James would have been tempted to growl. He wasn’t an Asset, and this man claiming it will be his prey. “Just wanted to let you know that you’ll be thawed in a few hours.”

 

“The Subject doesn’t hear things while in the cryo chamber, Agent.” A new voice…most likely a scientist at the use of ‘subject’ tells the man that’s a walking corpse, even if he doesn’t know it yet.

 

“Really?” Agent Brock Rumlow, agent for Hydra at least, says it as if the scientist just gave him a surprise gift. Softer this time, Rumlow speaks, “James? I hear your boyfriend’s been turned into a puppet, and your girlfriend is taming a beast.” Loudly, Rumlow laughs out. “No one’s coming for you. Fitting, isn’t it?”

 

Then that just means he’ll have to get to them… Whoever they were.

**The Archer:**

The Helicarrier comes in sight, and The Archer starts his mental countdown. It knows how to weight the odds and come to a conclusion. It knows what security measures SHIELD has in place, and It knows its way around them.

 

“661 Bravo, please relay your pass code.” The SHIELD base voice, Agent Corks based on inflection, says through the radio. “What is your hull, over?”

 

It has a list of codes and even longer lists of lies that It can give. Any of those reasons would be good enough to get The Helicarrier to open. The best attack would be a trick from the inside. Except they already know Its face. “Arms to ammunition, over.” The Archer tells Agent Corks, a little bit of warning to start the chaos.

 

But enough to give them a chance to stop it.

 

The weakness of every aircraft was the power holding it from the ground. It grabs the hi-tech bow and arrows. Grenade arrow should do the trick. The target is lined up; the arrow leased.

 

Tick tock.

 

The Archer finds the trigger just a bit further down his bow than the grip.

 

**BOOM!!**

Bye-bye large turbine engine. One more to go and bye-bye flying ship.


	19. Chapter 19

**Steve (Captain America):**

The floor under his feet lurch and everything not strapped down went flying. Including Steve and the rest of the team. He looks up from where he landed to lock eyes with the younger Stark. Now wasn’t the time. “Put on the suit!”

 

They could keep fighting later. There was a bigger threat that had to be taken care of first. They had to stop whoever was trying to down the helicarrier. Later.

 

“Yep!” Tony agrees, for once. This was his teammate, whether Steve liked it or not. A part Steve takes note of the other two still in the room, Fury and Thor. He also notices that Agent Romanoff and Bruce must have been thrown elsewhere.

 

They can handle themselves. At least, he has to believe that they can handle themselves. His priority is keeping the bird in the sky, and he needs the engineer to get that accomplished. Or, he needs the engineer to do his portion of the job.

 

Another thing the two of them agreed on.

 

“Hill?!” Steve hears Fury yell in the ear piece. His mind is going through scenarios, and different steps that will bring the casualties to a minimum.

 

“Turn up that engine! Number 3 engine is down!” A woman’s voice comes over the coms, and Steve assumes that the voice is Hill. “Can we get a run in? Talk to me.”

 

“Turbines loose.” A male voice joins in, and Steve is mentally going over the plans. This isn’t good. “Mostly intact, but it’s impossible to get out there and make repairs while we’re in the air.”

 

Only someone who knew the inner workings of the hellicarier would know when and where to hit to cause this amount of damage.

 

“Stark! You copy that?!” Director Fury yells into the coms, and Steve eyes the chaos as different groups of people run around and he runs a different path than the rest.

 

He has to get to the portside.

 

“I’m on it!” Stark answers, but Steve knows that the other man is going to need back up. No one can go at it alone. Everyone needs a team.

 

“Coulson! Initiate official lock down in the detention section then get to the armory! Move out!” Director Fury gave the orders, but Steve was already blocking out everything but what he needed to know.

 

He needed to get through the door. The SHIELD agents were trying, but there was no way that they were going to be able to do anything. They needed help. “Stark!” Steve yells, motioning for the techs to back out, even as they kept trying to kill the flames. “I’m here!”

 

“I got to get this super conducting cooling system back online before I can access the rotors and work on dislodging the debris.” That was not English spilling from the engineer’s mouth. “I need you to get to that engine control panel and tell me which relays are in overload position.” Now that was something Steve could understand.

 

Steve jumped over the railing and to the box that Stark was looking straight at. It looks like a control panel, kind of. At least, it did until he opened up the box.

 

Irrevocable proof that he wasn’t in the forties anymore…

 

“What’s it look like in there?” Stark calls over the coms, and Steve has absolutely no idea what he is supposed to be looking for.

 

It looks like the future just decided to come and smack him in the face with everything that he didn’t know. “It seems to run on some form of electricity.” He calls out, hopefully that would be somewhat helpful.

 

“Well, you’re not wrong.” Stark answers, and he sounds so much like his father at that moment that Steve flashes back to his much younger (and smaller) self and looking at the flying car with Bucky.

 

This is not good. Not good at all.

 

 

**The Asset:**

The cold draws away and James can move his fingers and toes, even if he doesn’t. James…yes, that’s his name. Not Asset. Not It. James.

 

And he has people out there. He just has to hold onto their memory long enough. He just has to remember the pieces of them, and not let his captors know that he knows.

 

He watches as they undo his bonds, but he doesn’t make a move. Not yet. Now isn’t the time. Wait. Patience. Sometimes it takes a long time before the shot is perfect. The pieces aren’t lined up. Not yet.

 

“Name?” A new person asks, a man in a suit that could be from any number of places. America, though, James knows. They didn’t wipe everything. Pierce.

 

The Asset doesn’t answer. _James_ doesn’t answer. What James does notice is how Brock Rumlow stands at the back. What he does notice…is how things are more mixed up in his head than they should be.

 

_“Yeah, that’s Pierce.” The blonde from earlier, the archer, waves a hand casually to where the one-eyed man wearing a black cape is talking to an older man in a suit. “He’s bit of a jerk, but Fury likes him.” Silence, as if the memory of another’s voice was wiped away before the blonde chuckles. “Good? I don’t know. Fury trusts him. That has to be good for something, I guess.”_

_“Do you?” James remembers asking, bumping shoulders with the other man while knowing…knowing…_

Burning pain radiates from his cheek as the man slaps him across the face. “You paying attention, Soldier? I asked you a question.”

 

James jerks his head down, not needing another slap to pay attention. If they were anywhere else…

 

“Good.” Pierce tells him, holding out a hand for a lackey to hand him a file. “I know you have done a lot of good for this world, but I have to ask you to do some more. Understand?” He talks to James as if to a child, and maybe that is the best way.

 

It’s hard to stay focused with all of the memories jumbled around. Some things were real. Some were fake. Some were from a life that couldn’t be. A lot of them were.

 

_“I thought you were dead.” A man wearing clothing from another era says to him. A man that shouldn’t look that way, even if it was hard to remember why._

_“I thought you were taller…”_

James nods, again. He understands. He knows that there will be another mission. There’s always another mission.

 

“Good. Good.” Pierce answers, opening up the file. “This is just a precaution. A just in case.” Pierce bends just a bit so he can try to catch James’ eyes that were filling away where all of the threats were at and the chances of escape. Not that he can force himself to do so. Not yet. They still had the power of the words. “Now, listen to me. Do you recognize anyone in these photos? It’s very important that you answer me honestly.”

 

The pictures are put in front of him. The red hair strikes as memory that he should remember, but he doesn’t. It used to be important. Maybe someone from a past mission?

 

There’s a man in a suit who looks plainer than what he is. At least, his memory flows just enough to tell him to be cautious, but not enough to give a definite idea as to what the threat could be.

 

Another black and white photo, but something deep inside, more of an instinct than anything else tells him it is older than the others. He knows the man in this photo.

 

James almost tells them, before getting a look at Rumlow’s face. No. Best not to let them know, even if the man in the photograph was long gone.

 

Another photo, but this one with a man whose eyes looked as if he was about to start laughing at any moment. No. His memory. If he tells them, they’ll take it away. But…what if they know that he remembers?

 

Still, James keeps silent. Maybe he can keep this secret. Maybe he can keep these memories safe from those that would rip them from him.

 

“Good. Very good.” Pierce answers, finally flipping that last photograph up. “How about this one?”

 

_Fury._

“Target.” James answers as he looks into Pierce’s eyes. A part of him from his past, a very early part that hardly ever makes an appearance, shivers at the coldness there.

 

“Yes, Soldier.” _No, my name is James._ “Very good. Yes, this man is going to be your target in the very near future. He’s a threat, understand? He’s a threat to world peace. He needs to be exterminated.”

 

James nods, but doesn’t for the reason that the others in the room thinks. If Pierce is a threat, and if Fury is a friend of Pierce’s? Then Fury was a threat as well.

 

“Good. Good.” Pierce mumbles, more to himself than to anyone else in the room. “Take him back to the chamber. Let him rest. Just in case.”

 

He should fight them, but he doesn’t. Now isn’t the time. Too many guards, even for him at this juncture. If he fights now, there is a chance of failure. He can’t afford failure.

 

He can’t afford anymore of his memories to be wiped away.

 

**The Black Widow:**

Not good. Not good. Natasha knows the only person that would have been able to make that kind of shot, and would have the knowledge to carry it out. Which just adds even more to her problems. In particular, a doctor that is looking more than just a little bit green.

 

“I’m okay.” Natasha says, maybe more to herself than the man fighting back the change from man to beast. “We’re okay, right?”

 

She keeps her voice calm, because that it what she’s supposed to do. She’s supposed to keep the beast under control. Beauty and the beast, right? Though which one of them would be the beast in this case?

 

Natasha may have been watching too many Disney movies with Clint if she’s starting to go down that path of thinking. Or reading too many romance novels found in airports.

 

He’s not slowing down on turning green. Definitely not a good sign. “Doctor…Bruce, you got to fight it.” She pleads, even if she’ll never admit that to anyone, least of all herself.

 

Natasha Romanoff does not plead. Ever.

 

“We’re going to be okay. Right?” She kept her voice calm, like she would whenever they would wipe James just a bit more than usual. Sometimes they would let him go as more Winter Soldier than her James. It usually took him a while to get completely back into the mindset. “I swear on my life I will get you out of this.” She said the words that she’d only thought. She thought them with James every time they called him back out. She thought them when she learned that Clint had been compromised. “You will walk away, and never…”

 

“Your life?” Dr. Banner growls out the words. The Hulk was winning, and there was nothing that she could do to stop the monster about to be released onto the helicarrier.

 

Still, she couldn’t stop a final plea. “Bruce…” This was worse than anything else, because there was no way out. There was no way to stop the monster coming free.

 

And without her…who would get her boys back to freedom? Coulson? Fury? They might, MIGHT, fight for Clint. But what about James?

 

The monster looks at her, and Natasha fights her way free of the rubble and up the stairs with The Hulk right on her heels. Sometimes it’s better to run, than to fight a loosing battle.

 

Over falling debris. Rolling under a turbine. Crawling through the pipes (thank whoever may be listening that Clint had given them the layout of the vents and pipe systems). Still, still, The Hulk seems to sense her movements and pulls them down.

 

She falls, but gracefully after a lifetime of being turned into a weapon. She may go down, but she wasn’t going to go down without a fight. She has a reason to live. A reason to fight.

 

Natasha ends up under the catwalk, escaping the raging beast for a moment. She doesn’t stop to take a breath. Speed. This may not be her usual play, but she knows the lay of this game. She just has to…

 

Vibrations. She hasn’t went far enough. Natasha pulls out her gun, well, one of them, and holds it steady when the roar shakes her bones. There’s always a way out. Any other thinking leads to failure. The Black Widow does not fail.

 

Still, she runs. She runs, looking for a way out of the flying prison. There’s no exit strategy for the base in the sky. At least none that would work with The Hulk coming after her.

 

She turns as the Hulk comes within range, knowing from his story that a bullet would do nothing to him, she fires at the nitrogen pipe near him. It explodes, and she goes back to running. No need to give It a chance to catch up.

 

Pain. Her feet leave the ground as a large green hand slams her to the side and into the wall. Now that…that’s up there in pain. She’s felt worse, but that…that’s a lot of strength in a slap.

 

She looks up, trying to get to her feet to at least get a chance. The Hulk looks straight at her and raises Its hand…

 

Thor flies in from somewhere and knocks The Hulk off to the side into another room. Natasha lets out a breath that she was just now noticing that she’d been holding.

 

That had been close.

 

Too close.

 

 

 

**The Hawk:**

It’s easy enough to land the plane. Even easier to take out the agents on guard. Easy, especially with all of the manpower backing the attack. They didn’t have a chance.

 

Somewhere in The Archer’s mind, there’s a jab of pain, but not enough. The memories were there. It knew those people falling at the gunfire from his men. He knew their families. He knew them from files and from missions from long ago. Still…still he can’t bring himself to truly care.

 

The emotions were a side thought. They were something that existed, but The Archer didn’t feel. He was flying over the ocean, while the emotions were cast deep into its depths.

 

He knows the path. He knows the plan, he created it himself. Loki gave him a goal, and he accomplished it. Was there anything else needed for a soldier? For a weapon?

 

“Get that engine down!” The Archer orders a group of his men, and off they go. All he needs is a couple for this next part. “Detention! Get him through the dark!” He orders to the others and motions for two that his brain supplies as Marco and Phillipe. Mercenaries. Soldiers of fortune. They’ll do the job and do it well.

 

At least they will if they want to have any chance of surviving Loki’s future reign.


	20. Chapter 20

**Captain America:**

Steve ignores the parts that make the control box look so alien and goes for the pieces that he remembers. Underneath all of the newness, there was the basic set up from his own time. Huh, maybe things don’t change as much as people like to think. “The relays are intact.” Steve tells Tony, needing to trust the billionaire philanthropist. “What’s our next move?”

 

“Even if I clear the rotors, this thing won’t re-engage without a jump.” Stark, Tony, said, sounding more like he was talking to himself than explaining anything to Steve. “I’m going to have to get in there and push.”

 

Yeah, no. It doesn’t take a genius to know how that recipe will end. “If that thing gets up to speed, you’ll get shredded!!!” He doesn’t want to have to explain how Tony, Stark, uh, got turned into confetti.

 

Okay, Steve is going to have to think on that a bit later. Maybe the team idea wasn’t that bad of an idea after all.

 

“Then stay in the control unit and reverse polarity long enough to disengage mag…”

 

“Speak English!” Steve understood words, not whatever Tony was babbling up. He needed a set plan, not…not a detailed explanation of how and what the things did. Not right now. Maybe later he’ll want to learn about it, but now wasn’t that time.

 

“See that red lever?” Tony asks, and yeah, Steve can follow those instructions. “It’ll slow the rotors down long enough for me to get out.” Which solves the Tony confetti dilemma. “Stand by it, wait for my word.”

 

Steve jumps over to that he can be beside it. Looking to the side, men in black tac suits entered the area. Help?

 

Gun shots points toward no.

 

He fights them off, but these men were well trained. They had lifetimes of different fighting techniques. Steve? Well, most of his learning came from the Brooklyn streets.

 

“Cap, I need the lever!” Tony yelled, and Steve could hear the fear under the urgency. He had to get there. He had to help out his teammate.

 

But he needed time. The fighting had left him on the other side of the lever. “I need a minute here!” He shouts out, already jumping over and to the lever that would make it possible for this plan to work without losing a team member.

 

“Lever!” Tony calls out, but it doesn’t matter. He’s not in position, yet. “Now!”

 

More gunshots. Where are these men coming from?

 

Steve climbs the loose cable to get back to the railing. Another step in the right position for reaching the lever. Finally. Finally the lever is in his hands and he pull is up. The rotors aren’t chewing…

 

Gun.

 

Steve notices the man changing his aim for the now practically destroyed Iron Man suit, and where Tony is no where near being safe in it.

 

It’s instinct that has him slam the gun man into a wall. An instinct from years of not liking bullies, and always needing to stand up to them. It wasn’t right to attack someone while they were down.

 

“Agent Coulson is down.” Fury’s voice comes of the communication device, and everything freezes. Steve looks to Tony, and he looks just as frozen.  “They called it.”

 

 

 

**The Asset:**

James hates the cold almost as much as he hates The Machine. Almost, but not quite. The cryo-chamber isn’t that bad. The worse part isn’t knowing how much time is really passing. He could be frozen for years. He had been, before. He remembers…He remembers…

 

Ugh, why can’t he remember? Right, machine. The Machine wipes whatever it is that they wished. They pick and choose what memories to keep and which ones to fade into the background.

 

Who is _they_? James has to ask himself, before the answer comes back. It’s harder to remember warmth as the cold slows down his body to the point where anybody else would be dead. His body is heartier…but he isn’t the only one.

 

Mountains. Cold. Training.

 

He remembers cages. He remembers others that were put on ice. He…shouldn’t be able to remember that. He remembers dancing. Little girls with razors for smiles. Innocence ripped away for a cause.

 

James remembers a harsh laugh and deep chuckles. He remembers gentle touches where harsh ones were to be expected. He remembers a flash of red and the sharp bite of electricity.

 

He remembers a small boy who wouldn’t stand down, and how James wouldn’t leave him behind. Not right…Not right…

 

A flick of a shadow. The shaft of an arrow. Missed target, but another found.

 

_Fury._

 

He betrayed his people. The archer wouldn’t follow a man that would give these orders. James knows it. His archer…his archer would go rogue before obeying such a man. He knows him. He knows the blonde boy. He knows the blonde man. He knows the crinkles in his archer’s eyes. He knows the smile of the Brooklyn…

 

Brooklyn. That was new.

 

 

 

**The Hawk:**

This part was just The Hawk’s. The rest of the team were set off on their own pieces to follow, and this was his part. It knows what people will expect, and It knows how to turn around the misconceptions to get to want needs to be done.

 

Well, sort of. He still needs the people to weaken the threat, or his piece would be a lost cause. Just a precaution.

 

It watches as the men that have been attacking the door keep going through to be merely stopped by the man The Hawk knows is in there.

 

“They are not getting through here, so what the hell…” The Hawk hears Fury’s outburst and feels satisfaction as it suddenly cuts off.

 

In the room the multi-tipped arrow was doing what it was designed to do. Hack through the security and eliminate the other engine. Which The Hawk knows worked because of the tilting of the floor under Its feet.

 

Detention Level. Release Loki. But if It falls? There’s always another weapon in the arsenal that can be put into play.

 

 

 

**Natash…Agent Romanoff:**

Breath in. Breath out. Breath in. Breath out.

 

If only her trainers growing up could see her like this now. She was panicking, which is something that someone in her position can ill afford. But how can anyone ever be trained to go up against something like The Hulk?

 

A giant, green, rage monster? How? Death was something that they had been taught to accept, but she didn’t want to die. She had too many reasons to do.

 

“Sir, we’ve lost all power in Engine 1.” Agent Sitwell talks over the coms, but Natasha can’t get herself to move. She can’t get herself to get up to do what needs to be done. It’s just…It’s too much.

 

Someone took James, and there’s not enough of a trail. After this? If they even make it? The trail might even be too cold to follow. They’ll have lost James. They…now isn’t that optimistic? That’s believing that she’ll get Clint back…

 

“It’s Barton.” Director Fury answers, and Natasha pulls the threads of her control closer to wrap around her fraying emotions. She can panic later. “He took out our systems.” She felt a surge of pride at that…Clint was smarter than many gave him credit for. “He’s headed for the detention level.” _To get Loki,_ she mentally supplied. That would be the secondary target after disabling SHIELD. “Does anybody copy?”

 

There are very few people that have a chance of taking on Clint and capturing him alive. Even fewer that would want to. “This is Agent Romanoff.” She owes him. She owes James. She owes it to them to get them back. Her. “I copy.”

 

Now this is something that she can do. This is what she’s spent her life training to be able to do. She has to get her partners back.

 

Step 1: Clint.

 

She knows the plans of the helicarrier and knows what path Clint will probably take. It would be the fastest route to and from the detention level. She knows _him._

Natasha turns a corner and comes face to face with the man that convinced both her and James to give SHIELD a shot. She isn’t foolish enough to believe that he’ll recognize her, even if she hopes that there’s something there underneath the blue gaze.

 

There’s not enough room for him to use his arrow, but that means nothing for his bow. He’s an agent, but she’s the spy.

 

Clint fights like he’s in a bar brawl, but mixed in with grace that comes from years of being an acrobat. He’s deadly, but while he was always defending, she grew up attacking.

 

Still, the switching from one hand to the next was a bit off-putting when he did that with the knife. She knew what he was capable of, but this…this was just a step further.

 

_He’s been holding back._

 

Mentally she makes a note to get onto him about that. Her and James wouldn’t have chosen him if he wasn’t their equal in every way.

 

Natasha wraps her legs around Clint’s neck in a move that they’ve done a dozen times. In training, he knows how to deflect it. Why isn’t he doing so, now? Why?

 

She flips him and his head hits against the railing. The blue is fading from his eyes, but can she afford to believe it?

 

“Natasha…” Clint mutters, and the part of her yelling to not hurt him counters with the rules that James and she came up with years ago.

 

_Neutralize the threat._

They can always ask forgiveness later. If there is a later.

 

Taking a page out of her boys’ book, she knocks him out with a quick punch to the head. Not as much finesse as she usually liked, but it worked.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It'll probably be a while before I get the next chapter written.
> 
> Thank you to anyone who is still reading, and to all the people(or cats) leaving comments for me to read. It's nice to know that someone is liking this out there, and my writing is no where near as terrible as my mind is making it out to be. :)


	21. Chapter 21

**Captain America:**

It’s hard to lose a soldier, but even harder to lose one that you know. Even if he’d only known Coulson a short time, the man did what he thought was right. He helped in the only way that he could have. He tried to stop Loki.

 

“These were in Phil Coulson’s jacket.” Director Fury remarked, the biting edge there in his tone. He’d lost someone that he’d known for years. It may not have been the same as losing Bucky was to him, but Steve had somewhere to start for understanding the pain. “Guess he never did get you to sign them.”

 

Fury throwing the cards onto the table was a slap to the face. Steve seeing the blood on them was a stab to the gut. If only they hadn’t been so consumed with their differences. If only they had been able to put aside their problems to be a team.

 

If only…

 

“We’re dead in the air up here.” Fury kept talking, and Steve heard every word even if his eyes kept glued to the cards sitting on the table. “Our communications. Location of the cube. Banner. Thor.” So many uncertainties. Such a big mess. “I got nothing for you. Lost my one good eye.” _Coulson._ “Maybe I had that coming.”

 

They failed, all of them. Fury. Stark. Thor. Banner. Roma…Where is the Russian assassin? Probably with the agent that Loki had under his control. Agent Barton.

 

If Bucky…If he…Yeah, he understands why she’s there with the other man. He would have been at Bucky’s side if he had the chance.

 

“Yes, we were going to build an arsenal with the Tesseract.” Fury explains, even if it was a little late. The damage had already been done. There are already casualties that shouldn’t be. “I never put all my chips on that number though, because I was playing something even riskier.”

 

Another weapon? More deaths? Do people never change? There’s always another battle. There’s always another war. Always...always more death.

 

“There was an idea, Stark knows this, called The Avengers Initiative.” The director goes on, as if to twist a knife deeper or go further down memory lane. “The idea was to bring together a group of remarkable people, see if they could become something more.”

 

_More like rip each other apart._

 

But…wasn’t that what him and the Howling Commandos were? They had been a ragtag team of survivors that refused to give up. They went deep into enemy territory where no one else would dare think to go.

 

“See if they could work together when we needed them to, to fight the battles that we never could.” Director Nicholas Fury kept talking, the point giving way to the idea of the dream. And to the memories of what had been before. “Phil Coulson died still believing in that idea. In heroes.”

 

Steve watches as the point hits Tony hard and the other man stands up. From where he was, Steve could see the slight shaking in his hands. Stark knew Agent Coulson better than Steve did, and his death had hit something more than just loss for the man.

 

Coulson hadn’t been the only one to believe in heroes. He hadn’t been the only one to believe in someone else. To believe in something more than what they themselves were.

 

“Well, it’s an old-fashioned notion.” Fury finished, but that was the thing, wasn’t it? Steve was from a different time. He saw the world through a different lens than Stark, but it was still the same world.

 

Fury had done wrong using the Tesseract. But…Coulson had been right. If they could put aside their differences…If…

 

Maybe, just maybe, they could defeat this threat.

 

But they’ll have to put aside their differences. They’ll have to let their egos take a back burner. They’ll have to be a team.

 

 

 

**Natasha:**

Even if it was something that needed to be done, it still hurt to watch the doctors strap her hawk down. It hurt far more than she would have thought it would. This wasn’t the way their new life was supposed to be, but here they were.

 

James was still missing. And Coulson…It would have been hard not to miss the message Fury gave them about their trainer. She doesn’t know how she’s going to tell Clint, let alone James whenever they find him. One of the major reasons why they left had been because of what Clint told them about the straight-laced man who wasn’t anywhere near as straight laced as he wanted the world to think. Sometimes the man would even join them in a few pranks, or at least have a hidden smile whenever he learned of some of their antics.

 

He’d been like an uncle, a father, a brother…and now he was gone.

 

It takes him 23 minutes and fourteen seconds from being knocked out to wake up. It takes him another three minutes and ten seconds to give up on pretending to sleep.

 

It’s another two before Natasha breaks the silence. “Clint, you’re going to be okay.” The reassurance was as much for herself as for the man being strapped down. They’ll get through this. They have to.

 

“You know that?” Clint’s words are harsh, but Tasha knows what he’s saying under the bluster. _Please let you know,_ is the hidden words, and the plea is in his eyes that sees way more than he wants the world to know. “Is that what you know? I have to…I have to go in. I have to flush him out.” _I can’t let there be a piece of him left that can hurt anyone I love…_

 

Their Hawk was always so protective, even while knowing what they are capable of. “We don’t have that long.” _We need you right now. You can make sure later._ “It’s going to take time.” _Time we can’t afford._

“I don’t understand.” Clint, her hawk, curls the words in anger. “Have you ever had someone take your brain and play?” Even if she knows the words aren’t meant to be the needles that they were, it still curls and claws at her chest. “Pull you out and send something else in?” He knows her story as good as anyone else possibly can. “Do you know what it’s like to be unmade?”

 

He knows their history. He knows what the Red Room did to her. He knows what Hydra did to keep their pets in line. Even if he is lashing out in pain, it recalls a lot of pain that is just her own. Softly, she voices the words that keep playing through her mind. “You know that I do.”

**James:**

The memories are pieces, but none of them could have came from one life. But they do. All of the memories, at least the ones without the discorded haze come from a life that James led. He remembers himself growing up, but he can’t quite remember how he got to this place. Or how they got him to begin with.

 

He does know that the people that first retrieved him from somewhere not quite as cold as the ice he was encased in at this point are long dead. He knows because he remembers. He remembers the missions and how each one, if the person was the same, had grown older with each thaw. He remembers training sessions.

 

He remembers that there’s a reason to hold onto these memories, even if he has trouble remembering all the time what that reason was.

 

James remembers Director Fury, or at least flashes of him in his mind. Some flow and appear real, while others do not. They’ve implanted memories for their ‘just in case’ plan.

 

Doesn’t matter. It-HE has a mission, and when they let him loose he’ll follow through. He’ll obey their commands. Why? Because he remembers.

 

Even if he can’t remember all of it…

**Clint:**

Fear and grief of what just happened had Clint react without thinking of his words. “I don’t understand.” It was his mind! His. Shouldn’t he… “Have you ever had someone take your brain and play?” Loki…He knew everything. He…he twisted everything until it all made sense without having to twist anything. How messed up was that? “Pull you out and send something else in?” Clint had been the one pulling the string, but Loki had been the one pulling him. “Do you know what it’s like to be unmade?”

 

The words leave his mouth, but the expression on Nat’s face makes him wish that he could reach back and stop himself from saying them. “You know that I do…”

 

Yeah, he does know. He knows that they know. Both her and James knew what it was like. He’d been there for a few wipes. While not the same…still, they knew. Just as he knew that apologizing for saying something like that wouldn’t go over well with her. “Why am I back? How did you get him out?” Partly he asked for curiosity on his sake, and partly for future reference.

 

The Machine was still out there, and it might not be Tasha that goes up against James in the future. He had to know as much as she did what could be done, potentially, to knock some sense into their boyfriend’s head just in case what they feared was truth.

 

“Cognitive recalibration.” Clint knew that smirk that Natasha was trying to hide. She was just a bit humored at the carefully coded wording. Coulson had taught her well. “I hit you really hard on the head.”

 

Their code still stood. They would forgive whatever the others had to do to get the mission accomplished. “Thanks.” Even if the other two didn’t like it. Pointedly Clint looks down at the straps holding him to the table. It doesn’t take more than a moment for her to release him. “How many?”

 

How many did he kill? How many of their coworkers had he taken out while under the control of a madman? How many agents weren’t going to go home to their families? How many?

 

How much more blood was covering his hands than had been before?

 

“Don’t.” She commanded and he so wanted to obey her. He didn’t want to go down that path, but what else was there for him to do? “Don’t do this to yourself, yastreb. This isn’t our world. This is Loki. Gods. Magic and monsters and nothing that we were trained for.”

 

Clint forces the downward spiraling thoughts to the side because that’s what Tasha needed. She needed him to not give into the thoughts that wouldn’t stop swirling in his mind. She was right. This wasn’t their world. Their world was cloak and dagger; guns, knives, and arrows. They were as prehistoric in this war as his bow was on the battlefield. Doesn’t mean that they couldn’t adjust.

 

Or that they couldn’t see when someone was trying their best to keep a secret just like that. “He got away?” Double question there, but one Clint didn’t want to know the answer to.

 

After everything Loki did, did the bastard still escape?

 

And the other question hidden between the words…did she find anything on where they took James?

 

“Loki got away.” Tasha answered, not ready or willing to answer the other one. He closed his eyes, knowing that her not telling him was the same as what they had before.

 

There was no lead on James. Whoever had captured him were professionals.

 

Tasha wasn’t about to let him dwell in that, and isn’t that funny? Tasha, the one that always claimed she was a monster was the one pushing two members of Strike Team Delta to do the right thing. “I don’t suppose you know where?”

 

“Didn’t need to know.” Clint muttered, not wanting to let her know just how useless he was as an inside source. He’d been a weapon. Did weapons need to know anything to do their portion of the job? “I didn’t ask. He’s going to make his play soon, though.” The god had been too antsy for anything else. “Today.”

 

Her lips purse together a bit before sitting beside him on the bed. “We have to stop him.” Her words were resigned, and her face was begging for him to understand.

 

And he did. Oh, did Clint understand. It was why he ran back into the burning building to save the stray dog. It was why James took a bullet that would have killed that bystander. Man, does he understand what she means. “Who’s we?” Because while he’d follow her to the end of the world to destroy that man, he also knows that they can’t do this alone.

 

With James? Yeah, they might have been able to do it. Strike Team Delta could do a lot, even more so than they themselves thought whenever the need arose. But without the fourth member? It would end in bloodshed, most likely Clint’s.

 

“I don’t know.” Tasha answers and the pain in her gaze has him unconsciously reach out to hold her hand. “Whoever’s left.” Double meaning, and a jab that Clint knows that she doesn’t mean.

 

The jab is just in his own head. To cover up the pain that wasn’t her fault, and he knows would cause her pain just to think that she’d indirectly caused him to go back into his head, he covers with a cold smile and a joke. “Well, if I put an arrow in his eye socket, I suppose I’d sleep better.” Or have James put a bullet in his head or let Natasha slide a blade in the “god’s” ribcage would also help.

 

Her smile was back, even if the shadows kept firmly in place as she touched his cheek with a hand callused from years of work. “Now there’s my yastreb.”

 

His hand slid up to cover hers where it was on his cheek. He rubs the hand that could easily end him and so many others with a gentleness that he hadn’t been able to since before James had disappeared from their lives. “But not my spider. What’s going on, Tasha? Nat? You’re the spy, not a soldier.” _Not like her assassins._ “What happened to make you want to join this war? What did he do to you?”

 

Clint didn’t even think to have his brainwashing and being controlled as a reason for her need. At least until her hand suddenly turned and clutched his with a bruising grip. “I’m compromised.”

 

“Natasha…”

 

“No.” Her voice was hard, but her eyes were soft. “No. I’ve been compromised.” There the voice lightened just a bit, and her next words bring him back to what feels like a lifetime ago. “I have red in my ledger. I’d like to wipe it out.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> James/Bucky didn't want to tell his story for this chapter...I'm completely blaming him for why it has taken so long to update. Yep. Not the fact that I have no self control or time management skills...All James' fault.


	22. Chapter 22

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This time James was the nice one. :)
> 
> Thank you all for reading and all of the comments. I should get around to responding within the next day or so. It's being a bit slow at work, so more free time for me (and less of a paycheck, but it's fine). :)

**Clint:**

“Tasha…” Clint reached out to her, mentally calling himself every kind of fool as he pretty much wraps himself around her back. “You know…”

 

She tenses under his hands, but she doesn’t pull away because he considers this a plus. “I know, yastreb. Clint. I know.” Natasha takes a deep breath before pulling away from him. Away from the comfort that she still views as a weakness to admit that she wants from time to time. “I didn’t find him.”

 

There were so many that could be the him that she’s talking about, but he knows. It was the whole reason for them being split up on this last mission. _James._ “We will.”

 

Tasha shook her head, seemingly trying to make herself small. Inside his chest, Clint’s heart clenches in pain. Tasha should never feel like that. “I don’t know, Clint.” Her voice broke on his name and tears sting his eyes. “W-when the Hulk…I…”

 

He moves so he’s sitting beside her and she can feel his warmth. “But you didn’t, Nat.” He bends forward so his elbows are on his knees. “You escaped The Hulk. You got me back. We’ll stop Loki and get James’ back. Okay? We’re a team, Tash. I believe in you. I believe in him. I believe in us.”

 

Clint feels her lean into him and he leans back. This is them in this world. They can get through this. “I have to tell you something.” Tasha starts before stopping to take a breath. He nods, knowing not to push whatever it is. “A lot of somethings.” Her laugh is harsh with a brittle edge to it.

 

Tears prickle at his eyes but he blinks them away. Now isn’t the time for his emotions. They can do this. They have to be able to do this.

 

“I believe Hydra has James.” Tasha starts and stops, as jerky with the information as she always could get whenever emotions were involved. This wasn’t a job. “Clint…” He turns, feeling as if something is about to drop that he never wanted to fall. “Coulson. He…he didn’t make it.”

 

Everything shuts down. Everything. It’s not completely unlike how he felt under Loki, but different enough that he knows the difference. This is the Clint that came before he crossed paths with Coulson. This was The Hawkeye that the Red Room would have gladly taken and wouldn’t have had any resistance. “How?” Her eyes are pleading for him to stop but he can’t make himself do so. He needs to know how his mentor fell. “How, Natasha?”

 

She flinches back and his fingers twitch to reach out to her. “Loki.”

 

The ice surrounding his heart cracks. Pain floods out and it takes everything in him to not just break down then and there. “I have to…I can’t…” Clint stands and ignores her hand out in plea. He can’t…just not right now.

 

Bathroom. The door is like a light leading to a safe haven even if it false. He doesn’t stumble nor does he run. The Amazing Hawkeye doesn’t let things like that interfere with the job.

 

He just…he just needs a moment. Then he’ll be fine. Just a moment. Just a moment to realize that he released the man that killed his mentor.

 

Just a moment to deal with the flood of self-hatred. Then…then he can do his job. Then he can put on his suit and go out there for the masses. After that? After that he’s going to bring James home before disappearing himself.

 

No one can blame him as much as he does himself…

**Steve:**

Agent Coulson’s death weighs on his shoulders. Director Fury’s words echoes in his mind, pinging back and forth in a never-ending reminder of what could have potentially been, and how many lives that could have been spared if they hadn’t spent so much time arguing amongst themselves.

 

The worst part is the expression that was on Stark’s – _Tony’s_ face when he left the room. The billionaire isn’t a soldier. The man was a civilian that saw that there was a problem and that someone had to do something about it. A civilian that keeps choosing to go back out there. A civilian that never had one of his men cut down while trying to fight against something so much bigger than himself.

 

Bucky falling…Steve dreams about that himself, and still wishes that he’d been faster somehow. He doesn’t know how, but still…

 

His feet lead him to where he knows Tony would have went to. The other man is looking into the container that should have kept Loki imprisoned. If they hadn’t needed to keep the Helicarrier in the sky. If they hadn’t spent so much time with the engines. If…

 

But Steve has had to deal with the what-ifs ever since he woke up. “Was he married?” Did they have to inform anyone else of the man’s loss? Were there anymore people that would be affected by the Agent that believed in the impossible?

 

“No.” Tony answered as if he wasn’t all the way there. “There was a uh…cellist, I think.”

 

Steve doesn’t look at Tony, but into the empty cell. Stark knew the man more than Steve did. “I’m sorry. He seemed like a good man.”

 

The harshness in Tony’s tone has Steve freeze as if he was still in the arctic at his next words. “He was an idiot.” The angry edge was a knife to the sympathy that Steve had been trying to extend.

 

“Why?” Steve’s voice matches Tony’s with the razor of anger applied to it. “For believing?” For thinking that there was a chance? A small chance that this team that was put together would actually work? For believing that not everything was lost?

 

“For taking on Loki alone.” Tony was still angry, but at least with those words Steve can see the pain hidden beneath the anger.

 

Sometimes people can’t deal with just pain.

 

Still, though. “He was doing his job.” Which wasn’t an excuse, but an answer to curb the anger. Anytime someone goes out to do a dangerous job, there was always the chance that they wouldn’t make it back. Heck, even going on a regular run to milk can easily turn into a tragedy.

 

“He was out of his league!” The billionaire turned so Steve could meet the pain filled eyes with his own. “He should have waited. He should have…”

 

Those words were awfully similar to the same ones Bucky used to throw back at him whenever he’d get into a fight with a bully without him nearby. It was different now, but really not. “Sometimes there isn’t a way out, Tony.” Sometimes someone needs to stand up, and sometimes that someone has to be a young kid from Brooklyn that can’t keep his mouth shut.

 

“Right.” The anger was still there but depleting with every word as he turns back to stare into the empty container. “How did that work for him?” Double entendre.

 

This couldn’t have been the first person that he’s lost, even if the file they had him read led Steve to believe that. “Is this the first time you’ve lost a soldier?” Not the time, but his Brooklyn mouth never could stop running when it had something worth saying.

 

“WE ARE NOT SOLDIERS!!” Tony turns with the rage that had been fading back to the forefront. “I’m not marching to Fury’s drum!”

 

“Neither am I!” Steve snaps back with his own. “He’s got the same blood on his hands as Loki does!” If Fury hadn’t tried to create the weapons…If… “Right now we’ve got to put that aside and get this done.” Even if it churns something inside of him to have to pick the lesser of two evils. “Now Loki needs a power source, if we can put together a list…”

 

Tony wasn’t paying anymore attention to the conversation as he turns back to the bloodstained wall where at least one Agent had fallen. “He made it personal.”

 

“That’s not the point.” Steve felt the annoyance at the billionaire start to come back, along with the sympathy.

 

“That is the point.” Tony turned back, determination had replaced the pain and rage that had been on his face just a few moments ago. “That’s Loki’s point. He hit all right where we live. Why?”

 

Shouldn’t it be obvious? The easiest way to destroy the enemy. “To tear us apart?” He meant it to come out as a statement, but to Steve’s own ears it sounded more like a question.

 

Was there something more to what was going on behind the curtain? Just like the Tesseract had been more.

 

“He had to conquer his greed, but he knows he has to take us out to win, right?” Tony started down a path, and Steve was starting to catch on. “That’s what he wants. He wants to beat us and he wants to be seen doing it. He wants an audience.”

 

“Right.” Steve agreed, understanding the path and heading down it. “I saw his act at Stuttengard.” Loki had wanted the civilians to know what was going on. He wanted the people to bow before him and know who they were bowing before. He wanted glory in their defeat. He wanted the world to see what he could do. Which he didn’t get by attacking them at the Helicarrier…

 

“Yeah.” Tony waved Stuttengard off as if that was just a side dish to a meal. “That’s just a preview, this is opening night. Loki’s a full-tilt diva. He wants flowers, he wants parades, he wants a monument beuilt in the skies with his name plastered…” Tony cuts himself off and as they lock gazes they both know that they other one knows what they are both thinking. “Son of a bitch!”

 

Where else would Loki go, but Stark Tower?

 

 

 

**Natasha:**

She takes note of the line of Clint’s shoulders as he walks out of the room and into the relative privacy of the bathroom. She’ll let him have it, for now.

 

It’s hard. Harder than she imagined whenever they first met the agent that would become their handler. Coulson treated them like they were people, where that had never happened before. He even sent her off to find James, knowing that she (or Clint, or both) would have taken off anyway. Coulson – Phil wanted to get James back because he was _James_ , not because he was a trophy.

 

They were people to him, even when he would close his eyes in exasperation and yell at them about paperwork.

 

_“Agent Romanoff.” Coulson said her name as if reciting from a manual of the week. “I expect this from Barton or Barnes, not you.”_

_She remembers leaning forward, all tries at being the seductive assassin long gone. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Her voice had been too innocent to be, but this hadn’t been a role. She had been herself, sharp smile and teeth on display._

_The man looked a lot calmer than any of their other handlers had been so far. Most (all) of the others were just this shy of angering the Black Widow and her Winter Soldier. “You went against orders.” Coulson nodded to the file sitting between them on the desk. She’d learn to read the hidden smile behind the bland expression._

_“If you happen to check, sir.” Natasha kept her tone annoyingly sweet. “I followed the order to the letter.”_

_He hadn’t looked convinced, and even she jumped a bit when he yelled out, “Barton! Out of the vents.” before the sound of scuffling could be heard and a fond smile came over his face, gone as quickly as it had appeared. “That’s the thing, Natasha. You followed the orders.” Pointedly he looked at the bandage on her arm. Just a scratch, but one that didn’t have to have happened if her handler had listened. “I heard the transcript. He will be reprimanded.”_

“Time to go.” Steve’s voice interrupted her thoughts, and she looked up before doing a double take. Full uniform. Did they find something else out?

 

Did they know where Loki was? “Go where?” She learned that she could question orders, at least to a degree. She also learned that the punishments that SHIELD gave out were no where near as bad as The Red Room’s had been. They’re people here, not weapons. Not tools.

 

“I’ll tell you on the way.” Steve orders and Natasha can just make out the sound of the door leading to the bathroom opening up behind her. Not without Clint. “Can you fly one of those jets?”

 

She keeps an eye on each of the blondes when Clint finally walks on out. Tasha knows that look on his face. He’ll go even if everyone tells him not to. “I can.” His voice doesn’t give anything away, but the set of his mouth does.

 

This is personal. Loki made a mistake killing Coulson, just as he made a mistake in taking Clint. He thought it would demoralize them, the truth?

 

It made them close ranks.

 

Steve looks at her curiously and she nods affirmation at his silent question. Loki didn’t control Clint anymore. Whatever it was that the god had done no longer had any sway over her hawk.

 

After taking her opinion, for there really was no real way to test her belief, Steve turned to Clint. Steve trusted her. She trusted Clint. “You got a suit?” It was strange trusting all of these new people, but Coulson trusted them.

 

“Yeah.” Clint answered, and it felt a lot like when he first had her and James come in. Then Coulson believed in them because he believed in Clint. This was just the reverse, in a way.

 

She observes the way Steve tenses up as if coming up with a plan. She sees the way Clint looks at the Captain as if trusting the man’s plan. “Then suit up.” This could work. Maybe. At least just this once.

**The Asset:**

James listens and pushes the memories deeper inside of himself where he hopes that The Machine can’t get to them. They wiped away someone important to him, but he knows that one of the others in the memory could help him remember. He knows, because he catches glimpses. Images.

 

Patience is a virtue for snipers, James knows. He knows what he can do with the body that he has. He knows…

 

He knows how to kill. Blood coats his soul and his hands. In his mind’s eye he sees the blood dripping from fingers that are both flesh and metal. He remembers faces, screams, and pleas. Most of the memories that jumble around inside of his head…they aren’t good ones. Most of the good ones are disjointed and faded, as if someone had tried before to completely wipe them but had been unable to do so.

 

_Fury._

 

Trying to grab the memories the flee as soon as he reaches for them doesn’t help where he is at now. He must make a plan for when he has a chance to escape.

 

They’ll have to release him from his frozen prison for him to go after the target.

 

 _Nicholas_ Fury.

 

_“Fury is just being furious.” The laughing blonde in James’ mind makes the joke with the lines around his eyes deepening, the only sign that he’s finding any of the situation at all humorous._

_“Wow, that’s not original at all.” A female voice floats in his mind, but no matter how hard he tries to see her, James can’t bring her face to mind._

**_Director._** _SHIELD Director._ James sees the man from the photo sitting behind the desk but doesn’t get any bad feelings about him. Could the man be that good to not set off any radars on him? Could the man in his memories that brings up so much happiness in himself be in the same grouping as the men that took him?

 

 **No.** Clint is loyal to a fault and can’t work undercover for anything that long. The man is too honest to keep up a lie…

 

 _Clint._ His archer’s name is Clint. Now if only he could remember the woman…the dancer? Did she dance? No. She didn’t, but she did. Two people? James fiddles with the question before pushing it to the side. Better to think of an escape plan. Clint could help him remember. He might even know the name of the others in his memory, or at least help lead him to the paths that would let him learn it himself.


	23. Chapter 23

**Hawkeye:**

Nothing can quite push back the need for self-hatred as being put on another mission, even if Nat keeps looking at him as if waiting for something to come barreling out. Well, sort of. Clint knows that Natasha trusts him on any mission not to break. But to not make it personal? Well…he may not have the best track record there.

 

He’ll still do his job. Afterwards? Afterwards he might just find the largest bottle of whiskey in the area to drown his thoughts into. Or go on a semi-suicidal mission of his choosing. There’s a few warlords that can still be taken out. It’s not like SHIELD is going to care after they fire him.

 

At least after they finish up this mission, then they’ll fire him. SHIELD doesn’t need any assets that they can’t be certain of their loyalty.

 

After Nat finds James (and Nat will find him, with or without Clint’s help), they’ll be fine. Really fine, especially if the team thing is going to be a go. They’ll have Captain America. They’ll have Stark. They’ll…

 

“Stark, we’re heading north east.” Nat says from his side. Clint can read the looks that she keeps sending his way whenever she thinks he isn’t looking. She trusts him for the mission but doesn’t trust him to not fall apart at the end.

 

She might know him better than he thought. Oh well.

 

“What, did you stop for drive-thru?” Stark snarks over the comms, and Clint lets himself give a small smirk in Nat’s direction. She just shakes her head so his smirk grows into a smile. Stark might be a fun guy to have around after the fact.

 

You know, if this whole thing works out and the world isn’t destroyed by a kid with way too much power at his hands.

 

“Swing up PARK, I’m gonna lay em’ out for you.” Stark tells them before a whole group of Chitauri come into view. Just another mission.

 

Sure. “Yeah.” Clint mutters, more to himself than anything else just as Nat takes up position.

 

Professionals, the both of them. “See them.” She tells Stark and probably the Captain wherever he was stationed up in the back.

 

Tasha uses the machine gun to fire at the creatures that looked like some deformed thing from the nightmare show that Carson tried once. Tried, because people didn’t care much for the fear factor after all of the clowns. Which, if Clint thinks about it, may had more to do with the timing than anything else. Not many people wanted to be afraid when going to the circus.

 

Shock? Awe? Yeah. Fear? Not so much.

 

Well, except for the lions, but they were just big playful kitties once you got to know them.

 

_Target locked._

 

Loki appears in his range and Clint starts shooting at the guy with the minigun on his side. Will it kill the wanna-be God? Probably not.

 

The best way to kill a snake is still to cut off its head.

 

Hit. _Control the crash._ He knows how to do this. He’s done it a multitude of times. The gun didn’t kill the guy, but that doesn’t mean that this is a failure. Failure is NOT an option.

 

The world has to be saved for Nat and James. Has to be saved for all of those people running in the streets that have no clue what is going on down in the sewers. This is their world that Loki is trying to completely destroy.

 

Clint’s? Well, his life was never all that normal to begin with.

 

Still he internally flinches when he crash-lands the jet on the ground. Coulson is going to have his head for the amount of paperwork destroying one of these things is going to have his handler do. Well, and himself if he survives.

 

Even if one of those squid things kills him, Coulson would still find a way to bring him back to life just to kill him for the paperwork.

 

Though looking around as they run out of the still smoldering jet…this might be his last mission. He can play it off as just another day, but this? This isn’t in his definition of normal.

 

And his definition is very broad. VERY.

 

“Stark, are you seeing this?” The Captain asks Iron Man and Clint has a smart answer ready to give. But…but doesn’t give it.

 

This isn’t his world. He’s just an old carnie that happens to be good with a bow and arrow. This is a game on a whole other playing field…

 

He locks eyes with Tasha, and he reads her just as easily as she can read him. Their world is cloak and dagger. Hers is long dresses, quicks slices, and bloody smiles. His world is nests, rifles, and arrows. War zones? They’re not soldiers.

 

This playing field? It’s for soldiers, even if the enemy looks nowhere near human and Captain America looks as out of his element as the two of them.

 

Man, does he wish James was here.

 

“I’m seeing, still working on believing.” Stark answers and Clint can’t agree more with the sentiment. This…yeah, if someone told him that this was going to happen in his future he would have been signing them up for the loony bin. “Where’s Banner? Has he shown up yet?”

 

_Banner. Dr. Bruce Banner. The Hulk. General Ross. Mass destruction. Containment center._

 

“Banner?” Captain America voices the question, but Clint is just halfway listening. He’s not going to have enough arrows for this. Nope. No way does his quiver carry enough to take out this army.

 

“Just keep me posted.” Stark answers and the explosion to their right breaks the shock that had them standing still. They race down to where they take cover behind a flipped taxi. Clint doesn’t want to look too closely inside. There’s blood and his logical mind says that whoever was in it is no longer alive.

 

James would have had their head for being in the open that long. He always was more of the soldier than the other two.

 

Explosions. Chaos. _Loki._ There are way too many civilians.

 

“Those people need assistance down there.” Captain America takes point and if they had been anywhere else Clint would be telling him where he can put the obvious statement. _Civilians._ They don’t know war.

 

Creepy creatures ( _Chitauri_ , a voice in his head that sounds way too much like Natasha corrects.) land near them and start shooting. Tasha pulls out her twin pistols and start firing. Clint, _Hawkeye_ , needs to find a better target than just the obvious. He has the perfect arrow, if he can just get the angle right. “We got this.” Tasha answers for them both. “It’s good. Go!”

 

He lines up the target in his mind and casually pulls one of the triggers on his bow. “Think you can hold them off?” Captain America asks; Clint just picks one the arrows that he needs by memory.

 

_Find the target. Remember the angles. Set the line._

“Captain,” Hawkeye answers with a twinkle in his eye that’s a left over from his years as a performer. “It would be my genuine pleasure.”

 

_Release._

**James:**

_“Francis?” James remembers smirking at Clint whose glare was no where near as threatening as he would like the other assassin to think. It was a cute middle name, but James could see why Hawkeye wouldn’t want it to be widely known._

****

Hawkeye. Clint was Hawkeye. An assassin with a heart of gold that they didn’t figure out until long after they had him curled between them. Clint would talk about some place that didn’t have The Machine…and talk about trusting his handlers. No, Handler. One man in particular.

 

_“Still better than James B. Barnes.” Clint snarked back with a casually thrown piece of popcorn landing perfectly on top of James’s head to roll into his too long hair. “Coulson never did tell us where he picked that name from, huh? Or what the B is supposed to stand for?”_

_A flash of red and a voice that was too highly pitched to be anything but female, chuckles from somewhere that James can’t place. “I think bas…”_

Knocking something pushes the memories back into the darkness of his mind. As long as he remembers enough when he has the chance it doesn’t matter about the rest. The Asset doesn’t need the memories to the job at hand. Even if the job is one that he was giving himself.

 

“There’s something going on in New York.” A new voice, younger and softer spoken than the ones before says through the layers of darkness keeping him under control more than even the ice. “I heard them talking about…Well, it doesn’t matter.”

 

The knocking starts again along with random bursts of what sounds like blasts of air. What is going on out there?

 

“Secretary Pierce wants me to go over the machine in case of any glitches.” The girl keeps talking to what James can only guess to be the air. “I…I don’t know if…” The girl lets out a breath and stops whatever she was doing to make the knocking sound. Suddenly her voice comes from a different direction. “You…I’m sorry. I know it doesn’t matter, but I…”

 

_“Sergeant Barnes!” A man in military clothing from sometime in James’s earlier years bellows out with the air of someone that is used to being obeyed._

_He remembers being nervous, but also determined for whatever was about to happen. “Yes, sir?” Or whatever his commanding officer was about to order._

_He felt tired…as if sleep had been something from a lifetime ago. “New mission, Sergeant.”_

“I wish there was a choice.” The girl interrupted the memory with almost a wistful sound to her statement right before the banging started again.

 

 _“There’s always a choice.”_ James mentally tells her and someone from the past that he can’t remember; another young girl that had fire for hair and razors for teeth.

 

 

 

**Black Widow:**

“Captain.” Natasha heard Clint tell Steve between shots. “It would be my genuine pleasure.” Right before a larger explosion and one of the targets, Chituari, had their head exploded with pieces of its head embedding into the nearby creatures and dropping them.

 

She gave Clint an unimpressed look and he just tilts his head and smiles her way. Captain America falls down the bridge and races over to the people. _The civilians._

 

Now this is a plan that they know. It wasn’t the first time that two of them held off the threat and got the innocents out of the line of fire while the third went for the heart. Usually the play was different with Clint and James guarding her back while she took the lead.

 

Still, keeping the Chitauri off Clint as he jumped onto the side of a crashed bus. She holds off the threat while he uses his greater strength to pull the jammed door open to give the civilians a chance of survival. A chance, because the aliens were still shooting at the streets.

 

Her clips run out. Clint takes out the threat coming as she changes them out.

 

This isn’t so bad. Well, pretty bad. “Just like Budapest all over again!” She yells to Clint. It really is like Budapest.

 

Way too many threats and not enough ammo.

 

In her mind she can see his expression of _‘Seriously, Nat? Budapest?’_ and it makes her smile just a bit. Usually her comment would get both of her boys to look at her as if she’s missing a few marbles. All three of them remember Budapest very differently.

 

His voice over the comms calms the piece of her mind that had started to think about their missing piece. “ ‘ _You and I remember Budapest very differently’_ .”

 

She remembers James telling him that after a mission that landed all three of them in SHIELD medical. He’d had a smirk on his face, and they’d shared a knowing look when Clint groaned.

 

Nat knows more than she sees Clint trip one of the enemy to ram an arrow down its throat. This is close hand-to-hand combat; more her speed than Clint’s. His best place was high in the sky guarding their backs, but he’ll be fine. They both had to be fine.

 

A simple flip over a Chitauri and she grabs an Energy Rifle to start shooting at them. Her own guns are useless at this point. No more clips. No ammo. No longer useful.

 

The Black Widow was trained to be a weapon, and that’s what she became. Her life had bent and twisted her into becoming the perfect weapon for whoever wielded her.

 

Now she wields herself.

 

 

 

**Captain America:**

After convincing the civilian officers to lead the civvies to safety, Steve goes back into the mayhem that is the streets. He sees Agent Romanoff flip over a Chitauri soldier and Agent Barton ram an arrow down another’s throat. They’re skilled, but this isn’t a battle that they could have prepared for. Heck, one that even himself could have prepared for.

 

Aliens coming from a portal in the sky? No one could have predicted that. No one.

 

Steve knocks back one of the aliens with his shield just for another to take its place. This isn’t working. They need…

 

Lightning strikes from the sky and spreads out to blast the Chitauri soldiers so that they are convulsing and drop dead to the ground. There’s only one man that Steve knows could do something like that, and so he’s not surprised when the other ‘god’ lands down in front of him and the two agents.

 

“What’s the story upstairs?” Steve asks for the information easily, and it’s a relief that things are maybe, just maybe, looking to have a possible good ending.

 

At least until Thor answers. “The powers surrounding the cube is impenetrable.” Well, there goes that plan of attack.

 

“Thor is right.” Iron Man says from wherever he’s at in the sky. “We have to deal with these guys.” Which is just fantastic considering that for everyone they take out there are another five to take its place.

 

“How do we do that?” Agent Romanoff asks the question and Steve takes note of how her main focus doesn’t waver from Agent Barton. There’s a history there, but now isn’t the time to dig too far into that. Later on he can figure out the team dynamics more.

 

Team. “As a team.” Steve keeps his voice and filled with a determination that he feels as strongly as he makes it sound. They can do this.

 

Together.

 

Thor doesn’t look like he agrees, but what else could Steve expect? “I have unfinished business with Loki.” Thor is the bad guy’s brother, but now isn’t the time for personal vendetta’s.

 

“Yeah,” Barton’s voice doesn’t change inflection, but Steve can hear the dry humor in the word, “get in line.” Romanoff flickering her eyes to the right and tensing up a bit adds her to the list of having Loki being put on a personal list for her.

 

Thor’s brother sure knows how to anger a lot of people. “Save it.” The order was to all three of them, even if just two had been vocal. “Loki’s going to keep this fight focused on us and that’s what we need.” There’s way too many other targets and damage that the ‘god’ could do if he wasn’t so focused on the show. “Without him these things could run wild. We got Stark up top, he’s gonna need us…”

 

Dr. Banner arriving stops Steve from carrying on with the speech he’d been starting. The doctor gets off of the small motorbike and looks around at the nearly destroyed city. “So, this all seems horrible.” Banner states the obvious without looking anywhere near being shocked.

 

Based on the man’s file, he’d probably seen places ripped apart on a similar but different scale from where he’d been hiding out.

 

Agent Romanoff finally looks away from Barton to give a quick glance. “I’ve seen worse.” Steve doesn’t want to know. He really doesn’t.

 

What he also doesn’t want to think about was how Barton titled his head to the side with a bit of a nod. Hopefully the worse that they’d seen had been the same place, though something in Steve tells him otherwise.

 

“Sorry.” Dr. Banner gives out the platitude automatically, but Steve can echo the sentiment. No one should have seen worse.

 

Truthfully, worse than this shouldn’t even exist. This shouldn’t even exist, but it does, all because of greed. Greed for power.

 

People really haven’t changed.

 

“No.” For just a moment Agent Romanoff’s accent slips into an accent that was both familiar and very much foreign. “We could use a little worse.”

 

Barton’s lips purse together, as if stopping himself from saying something extra. Thor appears to agree, if saddened by that fact. Banner? Well, the good doctor looks to be on Steve’s side on this one. The fact that something worse existed to this tragedy was yet another tragedy in itself.

 

Even if he could name a few places in his memories as worse. “Stark?” Steve calls to get Iron Man’s attention. “We got him.”

 

“Banner?” Stark asks from wherever he was hovering at.

 

The man was right about Dr. Banner showing up. “Just like you said.” This changed the game.

 

This team might not be anything like the Howling Commandoes, but Steve can see this working. The dynamics were different but could easily fold together to make something more than the sum of its parts.

 

“Then tell him to suit up.” Stark, Tony, tells him through the device in his ear. “I’m bringing the party to you.”

 

That’s when a creature about the size of a building comes around a building swatting at no other than Iron Man. Yeah, they need The Hulk to deal with this.

 

“I don’t see how that’s a party…” Agent Romanoff answers for all of them, but the woman readies her weapons as if there’s a chance that she could take it down. By her side, Agent Barton grabs an arrow to put at the ready.

 

“Dr. Banner.” Steve’s voice is only calm because of the different missions that him and his earlier team and done. His instincts are telling him to dodge because this thing is a lot bigger than the other aliens that they’ve been fighting against. “Now might be a really good time for you to get angry.”

 

Dr. Banner looks to Steve with an expression that’s equal parts amusement and self-deprecation. “That’s my secret, Captain. I’m always angry.” With that, the mild-mannered doctor grows, stretches, hardens, and changes color.

 

In his place is The Hulk.

 

While The Hulk takes on the giant Chitauri, the rest of them take on the other aliens that came in the wake of the giant one.

 

Maybe, just maybe, together, as a team, they could defeat this threat to the world.

 

Maybe Agent Coulson’s idea had more merit than SHIELD had thought.

 

Maybe they can take on this enemy that alone none of them stood a chance at taking on. Maybe…Maybe The Avengers could become a reality.

 

Maybe they might just have a chance.


	24. Chapter 24

**Hawkeye:**

This is totally not his world. Nope. Nada. Zilch. His world may be filled with explosions, but not with aliens coming out of the sky eating New York. Nope. He’s just a guy with a bow. Clint does NOT have enough arrows to deal with this. Nope.

 

“Guys.” Clint hears the tenseness in Nat’s voice, and tries to give a reassuring look her way. Trying, because if his expression is anything like his headspace, it isn’t all that reassuring.

 

Man, does he wish James was here. Having another super assassin that he trusts would go a long way with making things seem a little bit more possible.

 

Aliens… Why does it always have to be aliens? At least before it was juggled a bit with mad scientists, brain washed assassins, arms dealers…

 

Hopefully none of them were aliens, but it would make some weird kind of sense if they had been. Especially that chick in Botkyrka.

 

“Call it, Cap.” Anthony “Tony” Stark, aka Iron Man, voices through the comms and pulls Clint from that line of thinking. Well, part of his mind going down that line of thinking.

 

Mostly his mind is focused on the aliens and what would be the best targets. They have to close the portal, but also stop the creatures on the ground at the same time. Oh, and the civilians. There’s also Loki thrown in there.

 

Loki really deserves an arrow to the eye. Yep. Messing with peoples’ heads is not a fun play. Clint was sick of it back whenever the Hydra dudes (and dudettes, Hydra employs from both sexes) went in and scrambled with his peoples’ minds.

 

“Alright, listen up.” Captain Steven Rogers; aka Captain America, seems like he’s going to take charge. “Until we can close that portal up there, we’re gonna use containment.” Wow, great way to state the obvious, Oh Captain. “Barton, I want you on that roof, eyes on everything.”

 

Now that was a surprising move, but then again not really. America’s icon may be smarter than he looked in the old cards that Coulson likes ( _Liked_ , a harsh voice that sounds eerily like his brother-that-must-not-be-named correct, he always was a jerk).  Nat doesn’t quite roll her eyes at him pursing his lips, but it’s a close thing. They read each other like no one else can (except for James, but Clint isn’t going to tell him that anytime soon). She saw his surprise at the captain knowing where he would be most comfortable at, and the strike at the sign of trust. In the sky, Clint can take out any of them on the ground.

 

“Call out patterns and strays.” Steve, and Clint’s going to think of him as Steve until he can think of something a bit more witty to call The Frozen Man. “Stark, you got the perimeter. Anything gets more than three blocks out, you turn it back or you turn it to ash.”

 

Another mark in The Fossil’s favor (still working on mental nicknames). “Mind giving me a lift?” You know, since Stark was going in the right direction…

 

“Right.” The other man doesn’t sound completely confident, but Clint has a bad habit of making odd plans work out in his favors. Usually involving dumpsters. “Better clench up, Legolas.”

 

In another lifetime, Clint can see the two of them being friends. Maybe. Later. If they both happen to survive this ridiculousness, he can see if they could be.

 

Clint’s time in the circus comes in handy in more ways than one when he gets the lift up to the rooftop. This is just another show. Just another job. A strange job with enemies that are less human than his normal targets, but still…

 

“Stark.” Hawkeye calls over the comms, recognizing a potential threat that could easily throw the billionaire from the sky. “You got a lot of strings sticking to your tail.”

 

“Just try and keep them off the streets.” Stark answers back, and mentally Clint groans. This is his karma coming back after a lifetime of saying something similar to Coulson. He knows he told Coulson one time just to go ahead and blow the thing, even though he was still in the blast radius.

 

There might be something to his line of work and having a slight suicidal tendency in there. “Well, they can’t bank worth a damn. Find a tight corner.” It was…strange. Different. Not a bad different and really not all that strange if he thought about it.

 

A lot of times he played the eyes in the sky for Nat and/or James depending on a mission. Very rarely would they need him to play the rich husband, for which Clint has always been ridiculously grateful for. Even if he did play a good one, if he said so himself.

 

“I will roger that.” Stark answered back, taking his advice without any snarky comments. Clint watches out of one corner of an eye as Stark goes around the right corners and leads the enemy right into Clint’s path.

 

He can’t say that this is fun, but he can’t say that it really isn’t. This reminds him of Carson’s, except a bit more destructive and the chance of dying is slightly less.

 

Okay, maybe the dying part is a bit flipped, but at least now he’s a trained professional instead of a dumb kid playing with wood sticks.

 

“Nice call.” Stark calls to him and Clint definitely is adding Stark to his ‘maybe friends’ pile, no matter what Nat says. It’s not like she approves of all of his friends. “What else you got?”

 

Except…Nat and James pretty much do approve of all of his friends. Which leads to other questions…Do they approve of his friends? Or does he really have that many for them to approve of that aren’t their friends as well? Most of the people he introduced them to quickly wrapped them up into their circle. Especially Coulson…

 

Mentally he puts himself back into the present. Now’s not the time. “Well, Thor’s taking on a squadron down on 6th.” The big guy could definitely use some more fire power.

 

“And he didn’t invite me?” Tony, because he was definitely going to become a teammate he was going to see outside of the place, asked.

**Black Widow:**

A lifetime of training comes in handy surrounded by enemies that look no where near human. One of the enemy soldiers lifts her off her feet just for her to turn back around to cut its throat. Just another quick move for her to get the weapon back into her hands to turn once again on the enemy.

 

Well, to turn to what her instincts screamed was a threat just to meet Steve holding up his shield. Natasha lets out a breath along with the energy that she’d been holding onto to keep moving in this fight. She was trained for years, but that doesn’t mean that any of her trainers could have prepared her for this chaos.

 

There was just too many Chitauri soldiers and not enough of them. “Captain, none of this is going to mean a thing if we don’t close that portal.” With Captain America she must give voice to her plans where before she would have just acted with her people knowing just from a look.

 

But now Strike Team Delta is down to two, and two is nowhere near enough to stop this army.

 

“Our biggest guns couldn’t touch it.” Steve answers with a face that Natasha has already categorized in her mind as ‘I think I get what you’re saying’. It kind of looks a bit like James’s face whenever he lets down his guard.

 

She really misses her other sniper in the sky, even when he was being her shadow on the ground.

 

“Well, maybe it’s not about guns.” She nods to the flying chariots and sees the moment when Steve follows along with her thought process. The plan was crazy. Almost as crazy as any of Clint’s.

 

Even if she’s keeping his ‘Banana Plan’ in the number 1 place on the Top Ten Worse Plans That Actually Worked list. The list has some very odd names, with eight of the plans being from Clint.

 

Natasha looks at Steve to see him looking at her as if she’s just on this side of being sane. Huh, James has given her that look more than once. At least he did before looking resigned to the idea. “You want to get up there, you’re gonna need a ride.”

 

She smirks at the chariots flying past. “I got a ride.” Here she keeps her gaze firmly on the man that they’ve unofficially elected as leader. “I could use a lift though.” Natasha backs away and Steve goes ahead and angles his shield.

 

He’s still a little uncertain about the plan. “Are you sure about this?” He asks, and Natasha felt her face grow into a full-grown smile. It startles her a bit to realize that it’s one of her real ones but doesn’t let it show.

 

Maybe she’s been around Clint too long. “Yeah.” Or maybe her sense of things is more than a little bit skewed. “It’s going to be fun.” She’s still blaming Clint, no matter what him or James has to say about it. Her and James never did something this nuts before meeting the archer. Nope.

 

That doesn’t mean that all of their missions were straightforward, but she never had to write in ‘target eliminated by falling coconut that I dropped on his head from balcony’ before turning their duo into a trio. Or ‘mission delayed by angry monkey’.

 

She runs up and over the car before landing on Cap’s shield while he shoves her up into the air. The timing was perfect for her to be able to grab onto the back of a chariot. She pulls herself up onto it and cuts the turret shooter’s link to the chariot. With another move she has the target under her control. Um, she stuck her knives into her nervous system, same difference.

 

Light shines behind her and Nat knows that her team has her back. They are guarding her as she gets to the position needed to finish the mission. It’s…it’s strange to have someone other than James, Clint, or Coulson at her back. The arrows she sees from the corner of her eye give her a sense of calm that Iron Man and Captain America couldn’t quite reach.

 

Clint will make sure the Chitauri soldiers won’t reach her, especially with Steve and Tony helping out.

 

 

**James:**

There’s the sound of something that he thinks is a blowtorch and some more banging outside of his prison. If he could just find a way to communicate with the kid…But would it really help? The facility is too well defended for him to have a chance of escaping his cell. The best method of escape will be when they send him back out.

 

“Wow.” The girl breathed out loud enough for him to hear even through the glass and ice. “The work behind this…it’s impressive.”

 

If he could, James would have clenched his jaw in anger at the awe in her voice. That ‘work’ is what caused so many problems for him and his people. Na…

 

Ugh, why can’t he remember? Right, The Machine.

 

Footsteps and then the slight thump as something, probably the girl’s hand, hit the side of the glass prison. “No wonder they called Master.” Her voice was more contemplative than anything else.

 

_“Strap him down.” An accented voice from the past ordered from the confines of James’s mind. The orders weren’t given to him, but to someone else. “We’ll see how defiant he still is after The Serum has a chance to go through him.”_

“Hydra is really lucky that I know German and Russian.” The flittering as if pages are being turned, and another whoosh of the blowtorch before the crackling of burning paper. “Otherwise, translating this would be even more of a pain. Whoever wrote it really didn’t want anyone to know how to copy it.”

 

_James bumped shoulders with the shorter blonde at his side who turned with a smile. “Ready for the job, honey?” Clint’s eyes glinted as if he was purposefully jabbing at some hidden joke._

_There probably had one, but James doesn’t remember it now. “Yeah, yeah. Get the data. Get out. Minimal casualties.”_

_Suddenly the joy left the carnie’s face. “Listen, James… This data? If it’s even half as dangerous as Coulson makes it sound…”_

_“Clint.” James remembers saying his name, trying to put a stop to the shadows that had been creeping onto his lover’s face. “It’s going out of their hands one way or another, understand?”_

_The blonde had stared at him for a moment before suddenly smiling with an impish tilt to it. James doesn’t want to know where Clint’s mind just went, but something tells him it involved a bed and some sound proof walls._

Gentle knocking. “Listen…Okay, I don’t know if you can hear me or not.” The girl mutters, sound softer but closer than James remembers it sounding just moments before. “Just…Two things, alright? Two things.” There’s a small tap as though to emphasize her point. “One: Please be a good guy. Understand? Please. These records? No one…no one should have to go through this.”

 

_Searing pain as the electricity floods through his mind, erasing the pieces that the Handlers don’t want him to remember. More pain as fake memories are shoved into his mind, without care whether they line up or not._

Two taps. “Two: When they thaw you, you can’t let them know that you know. You have to be their soldier.” A shaky breath and the scratching of metal on metal. “I can’t unblock the memories, but you can. I’m just…You deserve a choice.”

 

_“James. James.” Soft voice and gentle hands covered in calluses cradle his face. “Come back to me. Come on, soldat. Don’t let them…” Her voice catches and no matter how hard he tries her face is shrouded in the darkness of memories that They didn’t want him to remember._

Footsteps and something being hit together. More flaring of a blowtorch and things move faster and slower at the same time. James counts the moments of silence between the movements of the girl working on something out there.

 

Another tap, and he listens to his unexpected ally. At least that’s how he’s going to view the too young voice that keeps talking to him in this frozen place. “I’m taking a risk here. Master…” Her voice catches just like the one in his memories did. _Fear._ “If they find out what I did, they’ll punish me; and I don’t know how much more I can take.” Silence before a thump that’s quite a bit louder vibrates the cell. “Master?” The voice is louder as though projecting into another room. “It’s finished. The Machine has been fixed.”

**Captain America:**

“Captain, the bank on 42nd past Madison.” Hawkeye’s voice comes over the comms as a steady presence and with the information that can help Steve get a better idea of what’s going on. “They caught a lot of civilians there.”

 

His mind notes the Humvees aiming mounted .50 caliber guns into the sky at the chariot riders and shooting them out of the sky. There’s also the Chitauri soldier that he just broke the leg of on the ground. Steve mentally logs all of this and brings up a mental map of the city and just how far away each of his people are at.

 

His people…never thought he would think that after the Howling Commandoes and Bucky falling from the bride. He never thought he would even have a chance of that after going down in the plane over the arctic.

 

Steve wasn’t supposed to survive the crash. He definitely wasn’t supposed to survive seventy years encased in the ice.

 

Out of everyone, he was the one in the best position to get to the civilians. “I’m on it.” He races down the street and without stopping jumps through the window. A quick flick of his arm and his shield flies out to knock out what looks like a Chituari bomber. Two soldiers aim at him and he ducks under a desk, which he then uses as a weapon to knock them over.

 

Somehow, he loses his helmet in the scuffle, but at least the soldiers are taken care of.

 

Looking over the civilians he takes in what can be nothing other than a bomb. Great. Just great. He doesn’t know anything about disabling bombs, nor does he have the time

 

“Everyone!” Steve yells at the crowd, motioning them to the doors even though they don’t seem to need the encouragement. “Clear out!”

 

The bomber from earlier lunges toward the bomb but it goes off before the Chituari even has a chance of turning it off.

 

Then through a window he goes again. Bucky will have a few…

 

Right, he forgot for a moment, again. Bucky is gone, just like his team. Just like his home. Just like so many other things that happened while he was frozen in the ice and time. To him, Bucky fell off the train just a few months ago.

 

He looks around the destruction and sees another time. The destroyed buildings remind him of Austria. Loki reminds him of another man intent on power and not caring who he destroyed to get it. Seventy years between him crashing that airplane and being thawed out in what was supposed to look like a 1940’s hospital.

 

Some things never change.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the long wait, guys. But on a 'happy' note? I have about half of the next chapter and a third of the last one. So...you should expect another update not too long from now. My muse is just not wanting to really put too much into anything right now. I have a bunch of short things written right now...but none of the long ones are seeming to want to talk to me. Fun times. :)
> 
> As always, thank you for reading. Kudos are awesome. Feedback even more so. All mistakes are mine; feel free to point them out. Constructive criticism is always welcome. Also compliments. Compliments are great. My ego loves them.


	25. Chapter 25

**Hawkeye:**

What in the world is she DOING?! Clint knows that Nat is one of the best in their world, but those moves? No. Just…No. They trained her (well, implanted memories, but that’s not the point) to be a ballerina and a spy/assassin. This? No. Just no.

 

If Nat doesn’t get herself killed, Clint’s going to kill her himself for this stunt. Then James is going to kill him for killing Tasha after Tasha kills him by giving him a heart attack.

 

He’s getting way too old for this. Way too old.

 

“Nat, what are you doing?” Clint asks with a mix of wonder and hysteria. Nat is the one on the ground that doesn’t take unnecessary risks. Nat…

 

Jumping flying chariot to flying chariot and being chased by Major Bad Guy without a backup plan was more Clint’s. He was the circus kid, they did stupid crap like flying without nets all the time. Well, not all the time, but it did happen.

 

“Uh…” Nat answers, and that is not an answer. Nope. “A little help!”

 

Knocking Major Bad Guy from the sky? Hawkeye can do that. “I’ve got him.” He’s not the dumb kid with plan wooden arrows.

 

His arrows have tricks.

 

Clint smiles as he quickly lines up the shot and lets it go with a little twist. Loki had ahold of his mind, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t taking notes on the ‘God’.

 

He’s not surprised when Loki snaps the arrow right before it had the chance to imbed in his head. Loki smiles at him, and Clint smiles right back.

 

BOOM!!!

 

The arrow explodes in Loki’s face, knocking Loki from his own chariot thing and into Stark’s penthouse pad.

 

Clint keeps an eye on his partner as she jumps from the ride she’d been using to land on top of Stark Tower. Safe. She’s safe.

 

Looking back around to his close quarters…Yeah, this next has been compromised. Too many of those Chitauri things around for comfort. Close combat is really not his specialty.

 

With one arrow left, Clint takes out one of the soldiers before changing his hold on his bow into that of holding a staff. He knocks over some of the soldiers with his staff, going into the next stage of his plan. Time to get off the roof. He jumps and rolls until he’s back to the soldier holding his arrow. He yanks it out of the flesh and takes a running leap over the side of the building.

 

It’s just another trick. Clint may not have been doing things exactly like this his whole life, but he has been doing similar things. He never misses his mark. Never.

 

The grappling arrow hooks into the other building and Clint twists his body around so that he swings into another building. No safety nets here, just him and the skills he’s learned over a lifetime.

 

He cannonballs in.

 

 

 

**Black Widow:**

Natasha looks down and waits until the angle is just right before jumping off the chariot and landing on Stark Tower. She curls into a ball to take the edge off the landing and comes to her feet right at the roof’s edge. Quickly she turns around to take in the CMS machine and a slumped Dr. Selvig. He’s given up.

 

No. That’s something that can’t happen. “Doctor.” Selvig has a job to do, the same as she does. Even if…even if it looks as if things are going to go from bad to worse. The Tesseract isn’t losing energy…it’s gaining it.

 

 “Loki’s scepter.” Dr. Selvig mumbles as if what he’s saying is making any sense. “The energy…The Tesseract can’t.” His voice lowers even more. “You can’t fight against yourself.”

 

Questioning targets and gathering information from a few choice words (or actions, as the case may be) is something that Natasha knows how to do. “It’s not your fault.” Still, though, she had to make sure that what she’s thinking is really what the information is pointing towards. “You didn’t know what you were doing?” She kept the last phrase as a statement, but in her mind it was a question.

 

For the mission, the people under Loki’s command had to know. For her heart? Well, for what was left of it? She really hoped that they didn’t know.

 

If there was a just god somewhere mixed in with the others, Clint would just have a blank slate in his mind from when Loki took control and until she knocked the god out of his mind.

 

The laugh Dr. Selvig jerks out is harsh and grating. “Well, actually I think I did.” The doctor’s lips are turned up into something that no one could mistake for a smile. “I built in a safety to cut the power source.”

 

_Just like how Clint didn’t deflect her attack when she knows he knows how…_

Now isn’t the time for that. Later. “Loki’s scepter.” Now is the mission. The portal has to be closed and then they can deal with the fall out of the two men that had been controlled by a man with too much power and not enough control.

 

“It might be able to close the portal.” He looks down and light gleams off something gold. “And I’m looking right at it.” This time when he looks back up, Dr. Selvig has lost the edge of self-hatred and looks almost like he did from the photographs in his file.

 

They can do this. They can stop Loki and his army. They can.

 

She nods and he’s scrambling to grab a laptop. Natasha rolls her shoulders and gets back into Black Widow mode. They need to verify that it won’t cause some type of explosion or rip open a permanent portal, but this was hope that she was cautiously starting to feel.

 

Selvig nods and Natasha takes that as her signal to grab up Loki’s scepter to slowly push it through the force field protecting the thing. She’s about an inch from touching the weapon that had caused and was causing so much pain. “I can close it!” She yells even though she knows she doesn’t have to for them to hear her over the communication devices. “Can anybody hear me? I can shut the portal down!”

 

“Do it!” Captain America yells just as loudly as she did just a few seconds ago.

 

“No,” Iron Man’s voice comes through just as loud and as urgent, “wait!”

 

“Stark, these things are still coming!” Steve, Captain America, counters with very good information. They can take out the ones already here. The problem is that they just keep coming. They don’t have the fire power to take out the entire army.

 

At least not at this short notice.

 

“And I have a nuke coming in.” Stark responds with as much snark as Clint ever did on any of their missions. “It’s gonna blow in less than a minute and I know just where to put it.”

 

The Black Widow looks up just as Iron Man grabs ahold of the missile and turns it up towards the portal. Suicide mission. The chances of a return trip without him as a casualty is in the single digits.

 

_“Clint! What are you doing?” Natasha grabbed the blonde archer to stop him from putting on the last piece of armor. “SHIELD will be here in an hour. Going in without back up is suicide.”_

_“Natalia’s right.” James told him, and Clint looked at him as if James had just completely betrayed him. “Going in against an army on their home turf without any plans or prep is suicide.” James adjusted one of his guns that were holstered on his side._

_Clint jerked his arm away from her hold. “And leaving them in there for an hour is signing those kids’ death certificates. You know it as well as I do.”_

_She looked over and locked gazes with James. This was a suicide mission. This was a horrible idea. There was no way…_

_She opened her mouth to tell Clint to wait, but what came out was nothing of the sort. “We’ll be your back up.” James smile might have been more of a quirk, but it was there. Her soldier was going to go even before speaking. No way were they waiting, even if it was suicide._

“Stark, you know that’s a one-way trip?” Natasha hears the words Steve is telling Tony right as the suited man reaches the portal.

 

Tony doesn’t answer, and Natasha shifts her gaze back down to the Tesseract. This was her role to play. There’s nothing she can do about Stark choosing to take the nuke into the portal, just as there’s nothing that she could have done to prevent her boys from being taken from her. All she can do is her part.

 

Seconds pass by, then minutes, each dragging even longer as they wait for Stark to come flying back out. Even if something is a suicide mission, it doesn’t mean that they must give up their comrade. She notices when the Chitauri soldiers and leviathans stop attacking to start shaking before falling over dead. “Come on, Stark…”

 

“Close it.” Captain America orders and Black Widow pulls the scepter out. The Tesseract turns off it’s energy beam and the portal quickly closed.

 

It’s Natasha that looks back up at the sky and sees a small figure plummeting to the Earth from what had once been a portal in the sky.

 

Tony.

**Captain America:**

“Son of a gun!” Steve’s smile covered his entire face as he saw the black speck becoming ever clearer the closer it got to earth.

 

Slowly, though, the smile dampens into a frown as Iron Man doesn’t slow down. Something is wrong. Very wrong.

 

“He’s not slowing down.” Thor gives voice to what is going through Steve’s mind, but the difference is that Thor can do something besides being a cushion for their teammate on his landing. Thor swings Mjölnir around and flies up.

 

Hulk grabs Iron Man out of the air, crashing/sliding down the building that he’s landed the two of them. After coming to a stop, The Hulk snorts out a breath and throws Iron Man off of him.

 

Steve’s boots hit the ground and he races over to where his fallen teammate had landed. The armor meant to be protecting Tony is bent and covered in black streaks. Thor is the one that rips the helmet off and Steve is fighting against the memories of someone else that fell.

 

They didn’t get a chance to look for Bucky’s body, and his remains still hadn’t been found after all these years.

 

The Hulk yells and Tony jerks awake. Steve lets out a breath and the memories fade away into the background for another day for him to deal with.

 

Maybe never, if Steve has any say in it.

 

“What the hell?” Tony sputters out. “What just happened? Please tell me nobody kissed me?”

 

And Steve lets out a breath. Bucky wouldn’t have said that, but he remembers his friend and how he responded to after being saved.

 

_“I thought you were dead.” Steve told his best friend, happily surprised that he’d been wrong. Bucky was here. Bucky was alive._

_Bucky looked at him from the chair that he’d been strapped to. “I thought you were smaller.”_

 

“We won.” Steve finally decided on telling the man. No way was he supposed to actually answer the earlier questions Tony had thrown his way.

 

“Alright.” Tony answered, trying to sit up. “Hey. Alright. Good job, guys. Let’s not come in tomorrow.” Steve could get on board with that plan, even if everything wasn’t completely done for the day. “Let’s just take a day. Have you ever tried shawarma?” What? What’s that? “There’s a shawarma joint about two blocks from here. I don’t know what it is, but I want to try it.”

 

Steve looks to his team and sees the way Thor looks up at the tower. “We’re not finished yet.” Even after everything Loki did, he’s still Thor’s brother.

 

Steve can’t completely understand what Thor is going through, but he can imagine. Him and Bucky may not have been blood brothers, but they had been as close as two men could legally get.

 

It doesn’t take long for the team to make it up the stairs and to the penthouse. Just a few more moments before Loki is crawling onto the stairs, looking for all the world like one of Bucky’s sister’s dolls. Slowly the god turns around to see where Steve’s team had assembled.

 

Each of the team is some variation of angry at the god. Steve feels just as angry as the rest of them. This world has enough people trying to play God without an alien coming in and causing pain.

 

“If it’s all the same to you.” Loki tells Tony, an inside joke that Steve isn’t even about to touch on. “I’ll have that drink.”

 

The Hulk snorts and Steve can’t agree more with that response.

 

 

 

**James:**

The creaking of a door alerts James to the presence of more people. Three, he counts as the footsteps coming into the holding area. Rumlow. Pierce. He knows those two footsteps, and someone new slightly to the side of them. A smaller man with lighter steps, and shoes impractical for fighting.

 

Impractical, but not impossible. People were always good at pretending to be someone other than what they were, and to give lies to what they can truly do.

 

“I told you my pet could get it running.” The new person, male, with a voice that sounded as though he was talking through his nose.

 

James heard the breath that the girl let out and the scrambling of her own impractical shoes on the floor to get to wherever she was getting pulled to.

 

Nothing that he could do about that.

 

“That you did.” Pierce told him, and Rumlow shifted his footsteps. Rumlow’s boots sounded a lot different than the others in this place.

 

He just had to wait until the moment was right.

 

Flesh hitting flesh and a high-pitched cry that suddenly cuts off. “Now, what did you really do?” Rumlow’s voice comes through the layers of fog that keeps James from trying to fight against the icy prison he is incased.

 

There’s nothing he can do as he hears the girl stutter. “Ju…just what I’m supposed to do.”

 

“No one touches my pet but me.” The whiny voiced man from earlier speaks without the nasally quality that he’d had before. A threat, but one that people only took while they needed something from him.

 

It was a good thing that they had James here. Clint? No. Clint’s heart was too big. He always had to save the strays that wandered through, like Lucky.

 

Lucky…

 

_He remembers Clint carrying in something that looked more like a rolled-up carpet than anything else and smelled even worse than his socks from that mission in the dessert. “This is Lucky.” Clint told them with a giant smile. “He loves pizza.” He had added, as if that would be the point that would stop him and… their expressions of horrified shock. “Kate’s been watching him.”_

“Ash?” Rumlow asks and mentally James goes through every scenario that is about to occur. The most likely being that the girl being dealt with.

 

“I don’t like my designs falling into anybody’s hands but mine or my master’s.” Her words whip through the air with the same defiance that a set of green eyes once held when looking up at him.

 

“Rumlow.” Pierce ordered with a fake gentleness. Pierce was a threat that needed to be dealt with as soon as possible. “The easiest way to learn the truth of the girl’s statement is to thaw The Asset.” Silence before the Secretary’s voice rose in volume, losing the deceptive of calm from his earlier words. “You heard me. Thaw the Asset, now.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew. Just the epilogue left and this work will be complete!
> 
> And, well, then there's another work being hashed out, but details.
> 
> Thank you for everyone who is reading! And thanks for all of the lovely comments and kudos.

**Author's Note:**

> The Russian is from google translate. Don't blame me if it's incredibly wrong. :)
> 
> This is going to be a multi chapter fic. Yay! The first of these in this series.  
> Drop a comment to let me know what you think. I love getting opinions.


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